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I tell her what he has told me thus far, and she says there's a lot more.

He's actually said that he's done so much that if you find out everything, there's no way you guys will be able to stay together.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, Season four, episode five.

Fantasy Land.

Lieutenant Joel Kern spent years building a successful career with the Colorado Springs Police Department, but in early twenty twenty two, it all unraveled after a woman came forward claiming she had sex with him in his patrol car.

But started as one allegation quickly ignited a chain reaction, exposing the secret life Kern kept hidden for years.

In the last episode of Betrayal, we share recordings of the cspd's internal affairs investigation into Joel Kern's police misconduct.

After signing an agreement to tell the truth in his interview, Joel continued to lie until investigators presented him with irrefutable evidence.

Several weeks later, Joel's commander recommended him for termination.

Quite frankly, the legislative intent is very clear that we cannot allow peace officers remain employed when they've lied during an ia investigation.

I have no option but to recommend your termination.

Termination would risk Joel's entire career.

It would be more difficult for him to get a job as a police officer.

Ever, again, listening to the interviews in the last episode, it all sounded straightforward, open and shut.

But that's not how it all shook out.

Joel wasn't fired, and we'll explore what actually happened and why over the next few episodes.

Following that meeting, Joel seemed to think that there was still a chance he could save his career.

He had one more card to play.

Here's Caroline, he said, there's a possibility.

I could save my job and go to an impatient treatment program that's specific for first responders and Laguna Beach.

Unbeknownst to Caroline, Joel had already started making arrangements.

While his internal affairs investigation was underway.

He went to a psychiatrist.

He told her he needed help.

The psychiatrist said he was under such duress that he really needed to go to endpatient treatment almost immediately, and according to his self report to me and the kids, he was diagnosed with PTSD and that was his cause and reason for being sent to endpatient rehab.

Laguna Beach is in southern California, about ninety minutes south of Los Angeles.

When you first see the homepage of the rehabilitation facility, you're greeted by stunning blue green water stretching against golden sand.

It looks luxurious, and of course it's not cheap.

But Joel and Caroline wouldn't pay a dime.

He said.

The department's going to approve it.

They have a connection with them.

They'll make arrangements for me to go there.

It will be paid for, and so I said, but your Penning termination.

His termination wasn't official just yet he was in limbo awaiting the meeting where the disciplinary ruling would be finalized, so there was still time for one last shot.

If he took medical and sickly, he could delay the disciplinary process.

If he could show the department he could change, maybe he could still keep his job.

Joel thought if he admitted he had a problem and he really committed to treatment, he could turn things around.

He absolutely needed to go to rehab to address not only his sex addiction, but because he wanted to make sure that he was doing everything he could to show the department that he was trying to be a healthy person to continue his employment.

He also told Caroline that it was a symptom of a larger issue.

He began to say that he struggled over the past handful of years with just feeling as though he had a sex addiction.

Joel was in repair mode to save his job and his marriage.

He told Caroline he'd fully commit to the treatment program, that he'd address his mistakes head on.

As furious as Caroline was, it looked like Joel was finally taking accountability.

Maybe being recommended for termination was the wake up call he needed.

During this time, Joel's wore he was committed to change.

He kept repeating the same mantra, I.

Want to get better.

I need to go do this, I want to get better.

I softened a little bit, and when I began to soften, I started having these feelings of will he get better?

Could he get better?

What does this look like?

Here's Caroline's daughter, Nicole.

There was this period where my mom was thinking, like, maybe he'll get better, and then they could possibly start from Scarrach and start dating again.

There were moments when that possibility felt within reach.

Caroline never wanted to lose her family, and Joel was saying all the right things, but Nicole was having her own reckoning about her relationship with her father.

Once she understood the depth of her father's betrayal, she reflected on who he had been during her childhood.

She started calling him one on one, sometimes demanding answers, other times simply voicing her anger.

During one of our phone calls, I said something alluding to the fact that he never really paid attention to any of us.

He never really did things to show appreciation for us.

He'd always been less present, put in less effort than Caroline.

The family had always talked it up to his demanding job.

Now, his daughter was left wondering maybe that's just who he is, Maybe her dad just didn't care.

But one of the last few times that I saw him before he went to rehab, he came to the house with my mom's coffee order.

The way he was at that time, he seemed remorseful.

And that remorse gave Caroline the tiniest bit of hope.

As Joel prepared to go to rehab, she offered him some grace.

After a lot of conversation, he and I agreed that he could stay at our home in the guest bedroom before he left for rehab.

Joel said he would come back from rehab a better man, that he was getting help so he could salvage the family.

There was a big piece of Caroline and Nicole that wanted to believe it.

But the night before he left for California, Nicole started to question was her dad actually planning to come back.

He led me downstairs, showed me how to resep go Wi Fi.

He showed me like where our air filters are, and then how to turn on and off the sprinkler system for our house.

It was just a bunch of little things, and I remember thinking like, well, I guess this is it.

He's never going to come back to the house because he was showing his seventeen year old daughter had to change out the air filter.

There were a lot of conflicting feelings.

Whenever Caroline was kind to Joel, Nicole felt protective.

One of his last nights in the house, Caroline made Joel dinner.

Even after all what he did.

Our mom made him tacos, and I remember feeling so angry because I was like, why are we even letting him stay in the first place.

If he doesn't want to show he wants to be with us, just let him figure it out on his own.

I was just so frustrated at the situation at hand, him going to rehab, him doing this to our family, yet my mom is still trying to be a wife.

I guess.

It was a hard habit to break.

Caroline's default mode was to care for her family, even Joel, and he was trying, or at least they thought he was.

I will admit we at one point had talked about if he could show that he was truly someone who struggled with addiction and was trying to engage in healthy behaviors, that at some point we could be friends, then attempt to date and start all over again.

We have a dry erase board in our kitchen that we would leave notes for the kids, or reminders or a grocery list, you know, whatever that may look like.

The night before he left, he wrote a note to my daughter and I that said I love you guys, I will and underlined will get better.

And I went to erase it, and my daughter asked to keep it up for a while, and then she made the decision of when it would get erased.

That was the last message they would receive from Joel for a while.

He was required to give up his phone during the first few weeks at rehab.

After two weeks at the facility, Joel was given his phone back and he sends a text saying just how incredible the facility is and he thinks it's going to be beneficial to him that he wanted to be vulnerable with me and the kids.

He described to Caroline how his behavior evolved, all of it by text.

We asked a voice actor to read his messages.

I was playing an online game in two thousand and five or six where people used an app called pal Ringo to communicate about game strategy for several months.

I used it for that, and then out of curiosity, I searched sexual terms and all these groups or chat rooms popped up.

People would post porn and homemade porn on them, and that started my addiction that progressed into chatting with females on there and sexting.

Joel said that led him to seek out other apps like vet Life, the Cank and fetish Sight that he'd been caught using at work.

I downloaded the app and found all kinds of porn that included pictures and video.

I found myself becoming more immersed in it and growing resentful of you because I could not please you like the men and the porn did.

Joel wasn't blaming her per se, but he was implying that this was all about not being able to satisfy her.

I found myself starting to believe in the fantasy world, and my self esteem crashed.

There were no boundaries or limitations in this fantasy world.

I could say things to women that were not imaginable in real life.

Joel went on to explain in graphic detail how this fantasy escalated into real life actions.

I could get a blowjob and feel more manly.

Once I saw how easy it was, I got hooked on that.

I felt guilty and knew what I was doing was wrong, but by then it didn't matter.

Low self esteem, self hatred, depression, anxiety, addiction all contributed to my behavior and actions, saying people would not do what I did, but I literally was not in my right mind.

Joel went on to say that this wasn't a justification for his behavior, just an explanation.

Then he tried to assure her he had told her all of his secrets.

You have discovered everything, and I have told you about all that is significant or I remember.

I have tried to explain it as best I can in this text.

Are there things I'm omitting absolutely, but not out of intentional deception.

I simply can't remember everything.

I hope that this in some way helps show that I'm being honest and forthcoming about my actions.

Back in Colorado Springs, Nicole watched her mom grapple with the tug of war between hurt and hope.

She was trying so hard to be with my dad for the beginning of it, like trying to work through it and trying to like maybe start fresh.

With him.

Still, Caroline felt that Joel was holding back.

For example, when she asked if he had affairs with any coworkers, his response was, cage.

I want to engage in conversations to heal.

I'd be happy to address this, but I'm wary of piling on for the divorce proceedings.

If there is any hope of working through this, then I want to address this.

Caroline suspected he was still carefully picking and choosing what he'd fess up to.

She wrestled with all of this while trying to keep some normalcy for their daughter.

Nicole was a junior in high school, so while Joel was in rehab, Caroline took her to tour a college campus hundreds of miles from home.

That's where Caroline was when she got a call from Joel's case manager at the treatment center.

Joel gave the facility permission to keep Caroline updated about his care, but this was the first time she'd heard from a staff member.

And so she said, he said that it's important for you to know that he is doing all these things and trying to get better, to not only keep his job, but to try to change and be a different person, and so I tell her what he has told me thus far, and she says there's a lot more.

He's actually said that he's done so much that if you find out everything, there's no way you guys will be able to stay together.

Then the case manager got to the point, the real reason she was calling Caroline.

She said he was one of the worst cases of sex addiction she had ever seen.

Caroline received a call from the rehabilitation center where Joel was being treated.

The case manager was direct with their assessment of Joel.

She said he was one of the worst cases of sex addiction she had ever seen.

She's telling me all this, and my head is just spinning.

I'm on a campus, trying to keep some normalcy for our daughter and let her be able to get a glimpse of what her future could be on a college campus.

I'm trying to hold it together emotionally for her.

I'm trying to hold it together emotionally for myself.

The case manager's words replayed in her head.

Maybe this story Joel was telling Caroline about reflections, breakthroughs, and progress was just that a story.

One night, to get a phone call and he says he has his ability to call people now, and he's talking himself up and he's saying, you know what a leader he is at the facility that he doesn't think he's even going to be there the full time because he's just doing so great, and his therapist thinks he's amazing, and he is taking on different leadership roles in his groups.

And I couldn't take it anymore.

So she told Joel about the phone call with the case manager.

The case manager's version of Joel's progress did not match his.

Joel became infuriated, and he said that she was a bitch, and you know this is why now he could see why she was standoffish to him.

You know, he just.

Completely twisted it and earned it and then let me know he didn't want her contacting me for anything ever again.

And so I said, sounds sounds appropriate at this point, because you're not honest with me, and you're not honest with this treatment team.

If he wasn't going to tell her the full truth, she would investigate herself.

And I can't tell you what prompted me to finally have this epiphany, but I did.

I had this moment after all of this, to pull our phone records.

To understand the gravity of this next story.

We have to go back in time, about five years prior, when Nicole was in middle school.

When I first introduced you to the family, I told you that their son and daughter were accomplished athletes and hard working students.

It's extraordinary they've maintained that, especially considering the trauma they've experienced.

For Nicole, it wasn't the first time she had faced adversity.

School, and the beginning years of high school definitely weren't the best for me.

For several years, Nicole was bullied.

She felt like one girl had turned the entire school against her.

There was a ring later.

It was the typical sort of movie scene where she seemed really popular and had a bunch of friends, and everyone was like crowding around her, and her lunch table was big where mine was nuts.

It was hard forming some connections, and so a lot of times family dinner would be the first time, like I ever talked to anyone that day.

It was hard, So that structure of family dinner was important to me.

This Sprowl definitely was someone who was a leader amongst her peers and somehow was able to get folks to kind of side with her.

In essence, and so she often was able to rally folks to isolate our daughter.

Nicole would often be in tears talking about how this little girl at school was bowling her relentlessly, and I was really caught between a rock and a hard place, between not wanting to give into a bully, but also to try to instill self confidence in her and look out for her safety.

Joel had casual contact with the mother of Nichole's bully through the kids' activities.

I said, don't you think maybe we should sit down and talk to her, And he said, let's see if the girls can work this out on her own.

And he just reiterated that this was a piece of growing up and that we really should reinstill self confidence in our own child so that she could stick up for herself.

It was a painful chapter that only improved as Nicole made more friends in high school.

Okay, now back to the phone records.

I had this moment after all of this to pull our phone records.

I searched the first number and it came back as the mom of the little girl who bullied our daughter so heavily throughout middle school and the onset of high school.

It was right there in black and white, call after call, text after text between Joel and the mother of Nicole's bully.

Around six in the morning, I called Joel and he answered and I said, Joel, I just pulled our phone records.

Why are you in constant contact with And he got really quiet and then he said she saw me at target and thought I looked really skinny, and so she was concerned for me.

So she's just been checking on me.

And I said, no, I just don't believe you.

They both knew it was total bs, but for Joel, lying was like a reflex.

This time, Caroline demanded the truth, and finally he confessed.

He said that he had been having an affair with her since our son graduated from high school.

It started because she reached out to him and congratulated him on all of our son's accolades.

And then he was very matter of fact and said, then she said to me, I always look forward to seeing you because I thought you were cute.

And he said, from that moment, I knew she'd be easy to have sex with.

And so he said that he started driving to her home at least three times a week and would have sex with her while he was on duty.

All of this was revealed on May eighth, which happened to be Caroline's birthday and Mother's Day.

At this point, the kids insisted on knowing every new detail.

They wanted to know that truth, no matter how disturbing.

I was just about to turn seventeen.

I didn't want to be in the shadows, and I wanted like the full picture of my dad.

But then sometimes the full picture of my dad was a little gory, and so it was hard to hear.

Hard to hear is an understatement.

Joel having an affair with the mother of her bully was devastating.

Nicole confronted her dad.

She said, you knew what that girl did to me, You knew how she treated me.

You knew that.

Sometimes you and mommy were the first people I spoke to all day because she got everyone to ignore me.

And then you went and had sex with her.

Mom and he just said, I'm sorry, And so it was just kind of reality check, like my dad just did not care, did not care about his actions and who his actions affected.

This was the last straw for their son.

How apparent can witness firsthand the torment that another child puts on their kid knowing this and then deciding I'm going to have an affair with her mom.

And so there's the breaking point where it's like you are not someone I look up to anymore.

Your Joel to me, now you can go fuck yourself.

The betrayal with the bully's mom was the deepest wound, and the fact that Joel didn't tell his family about it himself made it that much worse.

But the phone records revealed much more.

The affairs didn't end there.

Caroline tracked down the identity of another phone number that appeared multiple times.

This discovery helped her to make sense of something that had bothered her for years.

Like a lot of spouses who there's significant other spouse is a police officer who works during the evening hours.

The kids and I would take him dinner, and so when I would take him dinner, there was a specific employee who was just so incredibly mean to me and the kids.

If our son would drive down and bring him like ice cream or something like that, he would notice that this specific person that she was just incredibly rude and just not nice.

At Caroline, and she regularly brought it up to Joel and.

He would be like, Oh, look, you know, she's a miserable person.

That's just who she is.

You got you gotta let that go.

Turns out Joel had been contacting this coworker repeatedly.

When Caroline called Joel to ask if this was another affair, he denied it.

He said, come on, Caroline, she's just checking on me to make sure I'm okay.

I said, I just don't believe you, and I hung up, And then he admitted that he had started having an affair with this employee when he was a midnight lieutenant, and that the affair had continued on, off and on intermittently over the years, and that she was even in the process of booking a ticket to come out and see him while he was in rehab.

In one text, Joel laments about his situation to this same coworker.

There are pages upon pages of my text exchanges with you and our family phone bill line and the kids.

Seeing it has not lent me to building any trust.

I should be in contact with them, trying to win their trust back.

He was attempting to cut off contact.

It was too little, too late.

Only ten days after Caroline dealt with the phone records, an emergency jolted her out of her grief.

It was our daughter.

She was driving from lunch back to school and she was hit by a driver who had a long history of DUIs and the driver t bones her and totals the car.

I got there and our daughter was just completely and shock and in a ton of pain.

They drove to the hospital.

Caroline felt it was important to let Joel know, but his friends at CSPD had beat her to the punch.

He proceeds to tell me how he already knew some of the facts of the accident because his friends had recognized her name on the call screen.

He knew and he didn't call Caroline.

Nicole continues to recover and still has anxiety about driving.

In the weeks that followed, the contact between Joel and Caroline mostly revolved around logistics concerning the total car from the accident.

There wasn't much more to discuss.

Then one day Caroline got a call from the rehab They had a problem.

He says to me, Yeah, well, we're not knowing where Joel's at, so we wanted to check in.

Is he with you or you know, do you know if he's still at the facility And I said, no, I have no idea, and so we still had his location on all of our phone so I pulled up his location.

I can specifically see an address where he was at in Hermosa Beach.

And then I just looked at our phone records, easy enough, and the phone records had one specific number over and over again, and so I googled the number.

It comes up to a female's name, and then I called the number and I just said, hey, just to let you know my estranged husband.

I believe you're with him.

He's at a treatment facility and they're looking for him.

It's important that you let him know that they're looking for him.

Shortly after that, I got a phone call from Joel who said that he had relapsed and had fallen prey to his addictions, and that he had been meeting women online again and had been going out to different areas surrounding Laguna and meeting women.

Caroline sent emails to his case manager advising him of where Joel had gone.

With that email went Caroline's last shred of hope.

Joel hadn't let go of his habits, he just relocated them.

Caroline made the decision to prioritize herself and her daughter's needs.

His next contact with me was to call to say that he wanted me to know that he got a job.

This was June twenty twenty two.

After about two months in rehab, Joel told Caroline he was leaving.

He landed a new job outside of law enforcement.

He was getting his own apartment in Colorado.

Caroline was confused.

She thought all of this was to try and save his job at the police department.

And so he said he was at this point just hoping he could retire without any type of concern or charge of misconduct.

He wouldn't know if he would be criminally charged or how his actions would affect his record until later in the summer.

Would he be allowed to retire scott free or would there be consequences.

We'll get to this in our next episode.

For now, though, Joel seemed to accept that he had to move on from the CSPD.

He came back to Colorado to start a new job, and Caroline got clear about their relationship.

It was over.

Now they would have to work out the terms of their divorce, so they set a meeting to hash out details concerning money, property, and custody.

He and I agree that we'll meet on the fourth of July to agree on some things to be able to divide them out, and we agree to meet at a coffee shop that we used to frequent together a lot.

And so when I walked into the coffee shop, it was just so bizarre.

I see this older gentleman who clearly is not my husband.

I see a young teenager who obviously is not my husband.

And then I see this man who was fully bearded, hair is shaggy, he's wearing a fedora and a skull shirt, and he's waving at me from a distance.

And I had to take pause and stand for several seconds and the entryway of this coffee shop and stare at him.

Joel had always been someone who was extremely clean cut, and I just sat down.

And so as I sat down, he had his phone facing up and I could see prompt after prompt after prompt coming up, you know, just notification after notification after notification of his own of various dating apps, tender bumble, and it was just constant, constant, constant.

Caroline ignored the unending alerts.

Then the conversation turned to their daughter.

Following the incident with her bully's mother.

Nicole refused to be in contact with Joel, but she was seventeen, so there was still the issue of child support.

He said he shouldn't have to pay child support for someone who wasn't in contact with him, and so we went back and forth, and we even talked about that when we went through the mediation process, and I could not see myself forcing her to go through that.

I mean, my attorney advised me that we could go and have court testimony and take a look at what a judge would rule in that, and I just agreed to waive child support so that I didn't have to put her through that.

After we agreed on how things would be divided out, we started walking out of the coffee shop.

He walks me over to where I parked, and it's such an ironic memory because I see his watch and I can just see the constant notifications, and so I thought to myself, let's see what you say, and I just said, your phone kept going off and your watch is going off so much.

And his comment was, these are all my friends from rehab and my therapist.

They just keep reaching out to me.

I mean, even in that moment after everything that had gone on, he just looked at me and lied, I mean blatantly lied, and so I didn't even argue with him on it.

I just nodded my head and then I said, thanks for meeting me, have a good Fourth of July.

And then he said, can I have a hug?

And I said no, and then he just stared at me for several seconds, and like his voice was cracking, and he said, you will always be.

The love of my life.

And I just stared at.

Him, and then he said, I hope you know I love you more than anything in this world and I always will.

And all I could stay back was okay, and we parted ways and that was the last time we saw each other and probably ever will.

On the next episode of Betrayal.

When I came home, there was this envelope taped to our front door, and she just had this desperation in her face, like she just was hoping for it, and she said, oh, my gosh, is that from my dad?

Thank you for listening to Betrayal season four.

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at betrayalpod at gmail dot com.

That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com.

Also, please be sure to follow us on Instagram at Betrayal Pod and me Andrea H.

Gunning for all Betrayal content, news and updates.

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Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fasin.

Betrayal is hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Carrie Hartman, also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Our associate producers are Caitlin Golden and Kristin Melcurie.

Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crincheck.

Story editing by Monique Leboard, Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, editing by Tanner Robbins.

Special thanks to voice actor John Blomo, and special thanks to Caroline and her family.

Betrayal's theme is composed by Oliver Bains.

Music library provided by my Music and for more podcasts from iHeart visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts for wherever you get your podcasts.