Have you ever had a really big vision of doing something, and then the way it turned out was actually very different from what you had planned?
I think this is almost universal for us as humans. Think back to when you were a teenager. You probably had some ideas about becoming an adult and what that would look like. What kind of career you might have, or not. Finding a partner if you wanted one. Thinking about being a parent, or not having kids at all.
A lot of young people have this vision of how they think their life is going to play out. And at that age, we don’t really have enough experience to know that those things almost never actually play out exactly as you expect them to. I mean, just by listening to the guests that I talk to here on the podcast, we know that things happen that we never would have imagined – and life can take a completely different path.
My guest today is Mae. In high school, she had her life planned out. She had already met and was in love with her life partner, and they were going to get married as soon as they could, and they were going to have children, and live happily ever after.
That’s not what happened. This episode has a content warning for domestic abuse and graphic sexual violence, because the fairy tale life Mae had planned gradually turned into a nightmare. Until she finally decided that she’d had enough.
Resources:
Crisis Center brochure (Castle Rock, CO):
https://whatwasthatlike.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Crisis-Center-Brochure.pdf
Domestic violence safety planning:
https://whatwasthatlike.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Domestic-Violence-Safety-Planning.pdf
How does domestic violence affect kids?
https://whatwasthatlike.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/How-Does-Domestic-Violence-Affect-Kids.pdf
Keeping your children safe:
https://whatwasthatlike.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Keeping-Your-Children-Safe.pdf
The National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1.800.799.7233
National Resource Center for Domestic Violence: 1.844.762.8483
Local in Colorado: Rose Andom Center: 720.337.4400
Local in Colorado: Porch Light: 720.853.8850
Local in Colorado: Gateway Domestic Violence Services: 303.343.1851
Location in Colorado: SafeHouse Denver: 303.318.9989
If you’d like to contact Mae:
email: MaeScottOfficial@gmail.com
Mae’s website: https://MaeScottOfficial.com
Mae’s book, An Embarrassment of Pandas: Exposing an Abusive Family and a Flawed System, is available here:
https://www.amazon.com/Embarrassment-Pandas-Exposing-Abusive-Family/dp/B0G548WTHP
Her FB:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577182454783
Her Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/maescottofficial/
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/257
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Have you ever had a really big vision of doing something, and then the way it turned out was actually very different from what you had planned?
I think this is almost universal for us as humans. Think back to when you were a teenager. You probably had some ideas about becoming an adult and what that would look like. What kind of career you might have, or not. Finding a partner if you wanted one. Thinking about being a parent, or not having kids at all.
A lot of young people have this vision of how they think their life is going to play out. And at that age, we don’t really have enough experience to know that those things almost never actually play out exactly as you expect them to. I mean, just by listening to the guests that I talk to here on the podcast, we know that things happen that we never would have imagined – and life can take a completely different path.
My guest today is Mae. In high school, she had her life planned out. She had already met and was in love with her life partner, and they were going to get married as soon as they could, and they were going to have children, and live happily ever after.
That’s not what happened. This episode has a content warning for domestic abuse and graphic sexual violence, because the fairy tale life Mae had planned gradually turned into a nightmare. Until she finally decided that she’d had enough.
Scott
What do you think when you hear someone use the phrase high school sweethearts?
Mae
Now, I cringe a little bit when I hear high school sweethearts, and I’ll admit there’s still a piece of me that thinks, “Oh, that is so sweet.” It’s very romanticized, and we still have these ideas, these fantasies of happily ever after.
Scott
Yeah. And of course, that’s when you guys met. What attracted you to your ex-husband first?
Mae
It’s a little bit embarrassing, and I’ve come to terms with all of this over the years in therapy. I think truly what attracted me to him at first was how attracted he was to me. I was a very skinny, awkward teenager who was very insecure, and there was somebody who was paying me a great deal of attention, and it was very flattering, and it felt good. I didn’t realize as a teenager that what was happening was love bombing and this very over-the-top almost addiction to somebody. I didn’t have the language for that. I didn’t know any of those things. But I think the initial attraction was honestly just that he liked me a lot.
Scott
Yeah. As a teenager, you don’t really think about– I mean, you probably never even heard the term love bombing at that point, right?
Mae
Correct.
Scott
And he just went all in right off the bat.
Mae
Yes, and it felt nice to be showered with attention like that, to have notes left in my locker, and to have him waiting outside of my classes to walk me to another class, to be calling a lot. We didn’t have text messaging back then, but we had some AOL Instant Messenger to be getting those messages and to have him invite me out to lunch every day and to show up at my house as a surprise. But, in hindsight, that was strange. We had known each other for a few days when he first told me he loved me and all of that felt really good.
Scott
I mean, that was in high school, but even as an adult, I think people would find it hard to distinguish “Wow, this is really true love” versus somebody being just manipulative
Mae
Yeah, and I think your body is just flooded with hormones at the beginning of any kind of relationship. It is very difficult to determine what is just lust and attraction and excitement compared to some of the more logical things. And of course, as we get older, I think we pay more attention to logic and think, “Hey, I might think this person is fantastic, but how can I love somebody when really I don’t even know them? I don’t know this person’s middle name or favorite color. I don’t know anything about them, really.” I think a lot of it too is we love the idea of what this might be, and we create these scenarios in our head of, “Oh, this is it. This is my Prince Charming, and this is my happily ever after, and it’s going to go exactly as I imagine it’s going to go” when none of that really is based on the facts or even who this person is. And that’s unfair to that other person, and I have admitted that before. It was not fair of me to dive right in with him back then because, same on my part, I didn’t know him, and I was just kind of blindsided in what I thought was a good way by all of these nice things and I got sucked into it.
Scott
And that was in high school. Did you also go to the same college?
Mae
We did, yes.
Scott
Okay. And you guys just jumped right into life pretty quickly.
Mae
Yep. From the time we were 15, 16 years old, he would talk about how if we were 18, he would want to get married, that he was just ready to start this very adult life together, and would ask me questions like, “Well, what’s the point of waiting if we know we love each other, if we know we’re going to be together? We know we’re going to get married. We know we’re going to have kids. Why would we wait? What is the point of waiting?” And I have found myself, not just with him, but with other people, when they bring up their point of view, I am very curious about it, and I really take it into consideration and I thought, “He makes a good point. Why would we wait? Who cares if everything he’s saying is right?” And it kind of overrides my own logic. As an adult, I really have to keep myself in check with stuff like that even now. I really subscribed to everything that he was saying and people around us were envious, and that felt kind of nice too. All of our friends and thinking like, “Oh, I have to go to this party and try to make small talk, and, I don’t want to do that,” and we’re over there just thinking like, “We did it right and we lucked out,” and people want to be like us.
Scott
Looking back on it now, do you think he was really in love with you then?
Mae
That is a great question. I don’t know. I think there were a lot of things that he liked about me that were very appealing from a young age. We were in a couple of classes together in high school. He did not like to do homework or schoolwork but I did, and he would copy all of my answers. He benefited from my hard work as a teenager, and I think he probably liked that a lot. I was a bit of a bookworm, didn’t have a ton of friends or other things going on, and so I was able to provide him a lot of attention from the beginning, and I think he liked that. Maybe he was trying to mold me into this person that he wanted me to be in the way that I think I was probably doing the same to him in some form or fashion and, again, that just was not fair to either one of us. But I think we genuinely did care about each other at some point along this journey. I know that I loved him.
Scott
Okay, so you got married. Were you still in college when you got married?
Mae
Yes. We had one semester left of college when we got married.
Scott
And how old were you when your first child was born?
Mae
I was 23. So we graduated from college and both went to graduate school, and he wanted to have kids. I mean, again, even when we were teenagers, he would talk about wanting to have kids. I have a sister who had a baby, and she was actually pregnant at our wedding. I used to want to buy things. This was going to be my first niece or nephew. I was so excited about it, and he would get angry with me back then and say, “Why are you spending all of this time and energy on this other child when we could have a baby? We could be building our family. That’s where your energy should go.” And when we started graduate school, we did a little bit of the math to say we shouldn’t have a baby until we’re done with graduate school. As soon as my second year of graduate school started, I got pregnant and I finished classes, and our oldest was born about a week later after graduation.
Scott
How involved was he as a father?
Mae
At the beginning, not at all. I mean, he was present. Right? He was there for the birth of his child, all of those things, and he immediately went to work, which really was okay. What was really hard for me was I’m a first-time parent, I have this new baby, and the expectation was that, just about every single workday, I would come meet him with the baby for lunch. That was very hard. I know it maybe doesn’t sound like it, but trying to get the baby ready, and we’re in the middle of, like, blowouts, spit up, sleep deprivation, and get myself ready all the time. I wasn’t able to like rest at all because I had to drive across town and go sit at a restaurant with him and his family because they all worked together, and kind of put on this face of, “Oh, so happy, not tired at all,” and then drive back and the baby– oh man, she was a screamer in the car. It was so stressful.
Then, when he would come home, the expectation was that I pivot my attention to him and he really struggled with “No, I need to feed the baby” or whatever I was doing with the baby. If I went and met him for lunch, you better believe that he would hold the baby all through lunch, really like flaunting, because we’re in public and this is what is being seen. And going over the top with things like gifts for the baby and for Christmas– I mean, he built her a bed that was like a castle with a slide, but it was all for show, and he’d post it on the internet and on Facebook, so it would appear that he was involved. He would show up at– as she got older and as we had more kids, he would show up at sporting events and make his public persona a very involved father.
At home, when I tell people that I did everything, I cannot stress or emphasize that enough not just for myself, not just for our children, but for him. I mean, from meal planning to grocery shopping to cooking to all of the dishes all of the time, all of the cleaning, all of the laundry, all of the outside yard work. If it snowed, I was the one shoveling. I would schedule all payments for our bills. I did absolutely everything for him and myself and the kids and the pets.
Scott
It sounds like everything he had to do was go to work. “Hey, look, I’m a provider.” Right? Is that the mentality? Was that how he was brought up? Is his family like that?
Mae
That was the mentality. His dad is an attorney and he then was an attorney, and his two brothers were attorneys, and they all ended up working together. Their mom is like their paralegal admin support person – very, very enmeshed family that when I first kind of joined, I thought, “This is so cool. They’re so close. They just spend so much time together.” Me not seeing clearly the boundary issues that were prevalent there. You’re absolutely right, though. That was kind of the deal, and we talked about it of, “Hey, you go out and you provide for us.”
I was really more than happy and willing to do all of the other stuff. I’m thinking, “I will work hard inside this home, for our family, and you work hard outside of the home for our family.” What I came to learn is he was physically leaving the house. He rarely worked. He had a couch in his office where he would often just go take naps. He would go golf during the day and not in a way of building your clientele or networking. He would just go golf. He would go play hockey in the middle of the day, go work out in the middle of the day. He was rarely working, and he would just take partnership draws from the firm and pay himself, even though he wasn’t billing those hours to clients. Not only that, he kept us in very high amounts of debt, of unsecured credit card debt, and I would ask questions about it, and I would just be told that the firm owes him hundreds of thousands of dollars. He’s going to take care of it. He’ll pay off all the credit card debt as soon as they get even with the law firm.
I never knew what I was talking about when it came to money. I was able to see all of the accounts and see just how awful it was. I mean, every bill we had to pay came from our checking account. He would have to go take money from the law firm so that then we could pay a bill, whether it was rent or eventually a mortgage. “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” is what he was doing. I would ask if I could please work, and any time that came up, I mean– I’m sure you could believe the things that were said to me, but just how selfish I was. Like, what would that do to our children if I went to work, and how could I even fathom this? The part that used to make me so upset about those conversations is he would say to me things like, “Hey, when we got married and had kids, you agreed, you said you wanted to stay home with the kids.” And I agree. “Yes, that is what I said, and that’s what I’m doing, and you agreed to provide for our family and be able to pay the bills, right? And we can’t do that. So I’m holding up my end of the bargain in my eyes, and you’re not.”
The other part that was really hard for me that made me really start questioning things at an early stage, but I kind of just put it on the back burner, was this understanding from him that I wasn’t allowed to change or grow or be any different, right? I said when I was maybe 18 years old that I wanted to stay home and raise kids. And now, in my mid-20s, it has to be the same. I still have to want the same things.
Scott
It’s interesting that– as with any narcissist, it always comes back to him and how he appears to everyone else, and you having to get a job, that’s not going to look good on him as he’s supposed to be the big provider. Do you remember the first time he put his hands on you in anger?
Mae
I do, and it wasn’t actually something that really raised concern for me because, at this point, we had been married about 10 years at this point, and I had gotten used to a lot of his kind of manipulative behavior, and I excused so much of it, and I blamed myself for really all of it. The first time he ever put his hands on me in a physical sense– we had been at a neighbor’s house, and we had been drinking, and we came home yelling at each other. The kids were already in bed, and he was saying really mean, nasty things, and I was just going to stay downstairs in our house, not go upstairs and go to bed, and it was a big deal to him that married couples sleep together in the same bed every night. So, he tried to drag me up the stairs to go to bed.
I decided to go limp because I didn’t know– I mean, he was physically stronger than I was and I didn’t want things to escalate more, so I thought, “I’m just going to sit here. I’m not going to go upstairs with you and I’m not going to make this any easier for you to try to bring me upstairs.” When that happened, he had his hands around my arms, so I had bruises on my arms. And as he’s dragging me up the stairs, I don’t know if he lost his grip or if he just got tired of it – like I don’t really know – but he dropped me and my chin hit our stairs, and I had a– it was a small bruise, but it was one of those really deep ones. I actually took photos of that when it happened. It started to trickle in a little bit of “I don’t know what I’m going to do with these photos,” but somewhere in my brain, I was thinking, “This isn’t right and I might need this.” But at the same time, I thought, “You know what? We were drinking. I’m sure I said not-nice things. I probably provoked him. We’re just going to water under the bridge.” I used to have an incredibly avoidant personality, so I wasn’t going to bring it up again. It was just going to be like, “We’re going to move on.”
Scott
You had mentioned that you have a scar or a bruise that’s apparently permanent.
Mae
When we went to criminal trial, there were three nights that his charges stemmed from, and one of them was called the Pindustry incident, and that was the name of a local bar where everything kind of started. That night, he was in a terrible mood. Things escalated. There were physical altercations in the alley behind the bar and the grocery store that were over there. I believe he broke my ribs that night. I was not allowed to get medical attention. That was just about five years ago, and I still get pain in the exact spot where it happened. I was pushed up against this brick wall and he had his forearm across my throat. I grabbed some dirt that was nearby and threw it at him just to try to get away, and he took all the dirt and he was shoving it in my mouth and up my nose and in my hair, and it was so awful.
He finally, after a couple hours, agreed that we could go home and I remember feeling such relief. “Okay, we just are going to go home. This will be a forced time to calm down because we had to have an Uber.” The plan that night– nobody drove that night. It was all going to be having a night out with friends for a birthday and then taking an Uber home. The Uber ride was horrible. He was making a lot of threats while we were waiting for the Uber that I had to have sex with him in the back of the Uber, and if I didn’t, I would be sorry. I remember thinking, “I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to do that in an Uber,” but I didn’t know if he had made arrangements. I didn’t know what he was capable of.
So he was forcing my hands on him in the Uber. When we got home, again, I just thought, “Okay, we’re home now. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine.” It escalated astronomically that night even when we were at home. He raped me on our couch and it was very violent. I mean, it was, like, hair grabbing and forcing himself inside my mouth. With that, it was anal penetration. It was horrific. I ended up running out of our back door and jumping the fence into the neighbor’s yard, and I’m completely nude. At this point, it’s maybe 1 in the morning or something – I don’t even know exactly what time it was – and I’m thinking, like, “I have to go back because the kids are there and I don’t know what he is going to do.” So I went back.
Again, I was kind of hoping “Okay, we had a little bit of a break. We had some time.” I could not have been more wrong. Again, I came back to the house and he physically brought me upstairs. We had a walk-in closet. For the next about two hours, I was on my back in the closet. I had made the mistake somewhere along the line of telling him that my chest really hurt. I was on my back and he had me straddled and, for hours, he just continued to hit and poke the spot on my chest.
Then, on my left thigh, with his right hand, he just was hitting my legs, and I had bruises in the shape of his hand. One of them was just so profound and so deep that it is– we had an expert witness at the criminal trial explain that these really deep bruises, it basically is a scar. I mean, it’s gotten smaller over the years. Like I said, it’s been almost five years now, and it’s still there. It just looks kind of more like a skin discoloring now more than a bruise. But I mean, it was very clear – his hand in print – and I had photos of all of that as well that were submitted into evidence in the trial.
Sometimes I still get a little sad really because I like to run for physical activity. On hard runs when I am using my lungs a lot, it hurts still where my ribs were injured and it just is sad to me that I have these permanent physical reminders and pain too in addition to all of the emotional things from him, and for him to this day to sit there and say he never did anything–
Scott
That’s just incredible. It’s unbelievable that someone could be like that. Was that incident any kind of a wake-up call for you that, “Wow, I need to get out of here and take the kids and never see him again”?
Mae
A little bit. At that point, we had been in marriage counseling for about a year. The morning after it happened, when we woke up, I mean, he just had this look of– he looked like he was mortified. He had his hands palms up and he was like, “I am so sorry.” He was like, “These hands are not for hurting you, but it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been flirting with your friends while we were out.”
Scott
Back to you…
Mae
Mm-hmm. It was always turned back around to whatever I did. There was never any genuine apology. So, of course, although he’s saying it’ll never happen again and he is agreeing to finally get himself some counseling– at this point, he is saying basically he’ll do whatever I want, whatever it takes, that this will never happen again. But the irony maybe of it is, of course, he didn’t get counseling. He didn’t do any of the things.
I gave this to the district attorney, but they didn’t use it in the trial. Right after that happened, the day after it happened, I went to the library and I checked out “Forgiving What You Can’t Forget”, “Inside the Minds of Angry Men, Why Does He Do That?” Like, all of these things. Even after that, I’m taking it upon myself to fix this and make it okay. At this point too, the threats had gotten more significant. While this was absolutely the most violent he had ever been with me before, over the years leading up to that since we had started marriage counseling, the threats of me never seeing my kids again, that if I dared to leave him– again, I’m a stay-at-home mom and he’s an attorney with a family of attorneys, and I was terrified. So I really didn’t think that leaving him was an option no matter what.
Scott
Yeah, you were trapped. Yeah, that thing with, “Look what you made me do.” It seems like that’s just a pattern with a lot of domestic abuse. He was finally arrested after you guys had attended a wedding. What happened that night?
Mae
This would’ve been almost a year or more than a year after the Pindustry night. We were at a wedding for his friend. I didn’t even really know anybody at this wedding, and it was at a town only, like, 30 minutes south of us, but we decided to make it a little bit of a getaway and an overnight. There was a young man at the wedding. I was at this point maybe 37 and this person was 24 and he just was flirting with me unabashedly. His grandma came over and intervened at one point and said “I’m sorry. He’s had too much to drink. He just really likes you, whatever.” And my ex was upset at that.
Also a very common pattern in our marriage was this sexual control and coercion, and he wanted to have sex that night after the wedding. It had been one of those days. It was a weekend, yes, and our kids are all in competitive sports. The day had started at 6 AM – taking kids to sports, driving everybody everywhere, and then driving down to this wedding, going to the wedding. Now the wedding’s over, and it’s midnight, and he wants to have sex, and I just said, “I just am so tired. I can’t. I just don’t want to, really. Also, when you’re being jealous and angry, that’s not attractive to me at all.”
We were in this little cabin that had a bedroom where we were, and then his good friends were in the loft upstairs, but it was open and it was, like, paper walls anyway. So, we were fighting in the bedroom about having sex, and they heard us fighting, and they actually called out, and they were like, “Hey, is everything okay down there?” And I said, “Yep. It’s just who he is. This is just him being himself.” This was not new to me at all.
I had learned to kind of play possum when he got upset because nothing helped at all, and I didn’t ever want to make things worse or be accused of making things worse. He would threaten to video tape me a lot during arguments and the same thing. So I just learned my safest thing to do is just pretend I’m sleeping, and that’s what I did that night, and that made him very angry. I mean, it always made him angry but, again, I felt like I was damned no matter what I did, so this just felt a little bit safer for me. So, I was pretending to sleep and he was kind of hitting me, but not super aggressively. “Come on, wake up. Wake up. Wake up. This is not time to go to sleep. This is time to have sex. This is time for you to prove to me that you love me.” That was a big pattern as well.
I just was ignoring him and his MO– all of these nights that we talked about, the first thing he would always do was take my phone from me. He was, like, rooting around trying to find my phone, and I don’t think he could find it. He’d been drinking, so he was not getting a reaction out of me, so he just kind of kept hitting me and smacking me, and finally he said he was going to leave.
So when he left, I was texting his parents because they were with our kids. And I’m like, “Hey, he’s intoxicated. He was hitting me. I don’t know where he’s going, but please just keep the kids safe.” Because at this point, there had been so many threats about the kids over the last year and a half or something, and I didn’t know, again, what he was capable of. They said, “We’ll reach out to him and we’ve got the kids. We’ll keep them safe.”
So I just stayed in bed and, of course, he came back. Same thing, I just kind of pretended to be asleep, but I had left my phone out after. That was my mistake. He came in, he took my phone, and he’s yelling at me, he’s hitting me more, and I’m just not responding to him. So he pulled me out of the bed and was trying to physically force me to be up, and I wasn’t doing it. I wasn’t allowing that, so he pulled me out of the bed, and he was sticking his fingers everywhere – in my anus, in my vagina, like everywhere – and just trying to maybe get a reaction out of me. I don’t even really know.
I kind of crawled back into the bed, and he started sticking his fingers down my throat and you can see – because the police came and took photos – there are just these perfect marks on the roof of my mouth like crescent shapes from his fingernails, and I can taste blood. I’m still not responding at all, so he sticks his fingers up my nose and pulls me into a sitting position and smashes his hand on my face, and I thought it broke my nose. I opened my eyes and there’s just blood. While he had been very violent in the past, he had never made me bleed before, ever. It hurts so much. It’s so sensitive – all the cartilage in there – and I’m seeing all this blood.
He had my iPhone in his pocket, but he didn’t take my Apple Watch off my wrist – he normally did that too. So, I pushed the SOS button on the Apple Watch and it connected, and he’s standing there and he’s “Really? This is what you’re doing? You’re really going to call the police?” And the call connected, and I was able to tell them that there was a dispute and give them where we were. When he realized that the call connected, he left. When my phone was far away from my watch, the call disconnected. They called back and he answered the phone. I will tell you, in criminal trial, for at least 45 minutes, I was questioned by the defense. Their questions were, “How did I know he had my phone?” And I was like, “Well, yeah, I saw him put it in his pocket.” “But how did you know he had your phone?” And I’m like, “Well, because the police told me when they apprehended him that my phone was with him.” “Okay, but how did you know?” And I’m thinking, “He answered the 911 call. I don’t understand.”
Scott
Yeah. Where is that going? I don’t understand that.
Mae
Well, because one of his charges was about taking my phone– it’s like a false imprisonment charge. He took my keys and my phone, but it was just so ludicrous. I’m like, “Because he answered the call.” Right? And it’s funny because, in my head, when I would tell people what happened, I was like on a spy show and I’m hitting the button on my watch and I’m like, “Hello, 911, we have a domestic disturbance. This is where it is.” Well, if you listen to the 911 audio, I am just, like, hysterical. It’s funny how our brains do things to protect us, but hearing the audio really broke my heart for me and how scared I was.
911 Operator
911. What’s the address of the emergency?
Mae
We have a domestic dispute.
911 Operator
What’s the address?
Mae
I don’t know. I’m at a Jellystone in Larkspur.
911 Operator
Okay. Has it been physical?
Mae
I’m sorry, I don’t know.
911 Operator
That’s okay. Do you have a campsite number?
Mae
I think it’s like 195.
911 Operator
Okay. And again, has it been physical at all?
Mae
Yes.
Mae
He also was an avid hunter and had his concealed carry permit, and he had his gun with him that night. He always had his gun. And with the escalation, I thought that was really why I called the police. The blood scared me, but I thought, “This is it. He’s really going to kill me tonight. Tonight is the night that it happens.”
Scott
He just sounds completely psychotic and just blinded by rage. Okay, so the cops showed up to where you were, but he was gone. Right?
Mae
Correct.
Scott
How did they find him?
Mae
I actually don’t know the details of how they found him. I think, because I had talked to his parents, again, I used our friend’s phone to call his parents, and I think they saw and recognized how severe this was and it did not look good, and I think they were trying to find him as well. It sounds like his dad found him in a grocery store parking lot. I don’t know if his dad maybe told the police, “Hey, this is where he is.” I really don’t, even to this day, know the details of that, but they did come and arrest him.
One of the things that they showed in trial was that he’s talking to the officer and he says to the officer, “I need to figure out how to spin this because I’m an attorney and I know this doesn’t look good for me.” And like you said, I mean, completely kind of just, blinded by rage but also– when I hear things like that, I’m like, “There was a lot of logic still happening.” I went to the hospital with the police. I did full sexual assault exam. They had their special cameras to document everything, and they wanted to medically make sure everything was okay, like, with my nose. I didn’t have my cell phone, so I had to call somebody to come pick me up, so I called my parents, and that was horrible because I didn’t want them to know.
Scott
How much did they know already about how it was going?
Mae
That’s a really good question. They knew things were not great. They knew we were in marriage counseling. I had told my mom a couple times that I felt like one of us was not going to make it out of the marriage alive and I never really went into detail. I just said, “It’s so bad.” And she didn’t press me. I think she was trying to let me talk about it as I felt comfortable, but so much of my goal was to protect him still. I didn’t even tell our marriage therapist or my individual therapist how bad things were. After that Pindustry night, we had a counseling session two days later with the marriage counselor, and he was like, “You can’t tell her. You cannot tell her what happened.” I could get in trouble. So I was very protective of him also because, no matter what, this is the father of my children too, right? And that was really confusing for me. And so people knew– because I’m also not a very good liar, and so people could kind of tell that I wasn’t very happy, I wasn’t doing great. But I would also minimize and be like, “We have kids, it’s hard, it’s stressful. You guys get it. Life. It’s just a lot. It’s a phase.” And so my parents didn’t know very much.
I’m very close with my parents and I think, for a long time, and maybe even still to this day, that they felt like they should have done more, they should have known, and I have tried to absolve them of all of that.
Scott
Of course, yeah. As a parent, we’re supposed to protect our kids, but you kind of made that decision for them by not telling them really all the bad stuff that was happening.
Mae
Exactly.
Scott
What was he charged with that night?
Mae
From that night, he was charged with a sex assault crime for sticking his fingers in me, and there was the false imprisonment with the phone and the keys, and a physical assault charge for the injury to the nose and hitting me. But the majority of his charges came from that Pindustry night. So ultimately, five felonies and four misdemeanors. That’s what he was charged with.
Scott
One of the charges was child abuse. How did that happen?
Mae
That was from the third night. It was a New Year’s Eve incident from 2021 into 2022. We had COVID at our house, and so we were all just home and it was just us. My daughter and then my ex were the ones who were positive in that go-round of it, and he just was miserable that day because I’m sure he didn’t physically feel well, but there was a lot of feeling sorry for himself too, that he had COVID and it’s New Year’s and this is such a bummer. The kids were bummed as well because we would usually see friends and that kind of thing. We just stayed home and it was fine. It really was fine.
I got our youngest in bed and he was asleep, and then the bigger kids and I decided to watch the ball drop, and it’s midnight. My oldest said to her brother just something kind of typical sibling of “Ugh, I can’t believe mom let you stay up until midnight. When I was your age, she wouldn’t have let me stay up until midnight.” Their dad heard that and just went off on her about, “She’s so disrespectful. She can’t talk to her brother that way. She’s not his parent. This is so out of line.” He had very big reactions to a lot of things, and this was one of them, and she was so hurt and so upset, and she ran up to her room. I went up to check on her, and he came in and still was just in a complete rage. I mean, he was not drinking that night – because people often ask if it was all surrounding alcohol or, and it was not. He wasn’t drinking, and he just is screaming at her about just being a terrible person. So, I was like, “Enough. Come on. Go to bed. You got COVID. It’s after midnight now. We’re all just going to go to bed.” And he just would not stop.
So, what I would typically do when he would get really upset is I would call his parents for help. They were always my first call. They knew. They knew everything. They knew what was going on. So I took out my phone, and I called his mom. When he saw what I was doing, he tackled me for the phone. It did connect and she heard something and she said, after the fact, she thought we were just calling to say Happy New Year and that it was, like, all the noise of “Ah, New Year’s!” She had no idea that this was–
So he wrestled me for the phone, and we kind of fell on our daughter’s bed and then on the floor. I’m clutching this phone like it is my lifeline, to my chest. Again, I’m on my back and he’s on top of me. Our daughter, who was about 14 at the time, came and jumped on his back and was like, “Get off my mom. Get off. Stop it.” He just moved in a way that threw her backwards and off of him, and she hit her head and she blacked out, and he didn’t stop. Even with our child now maybe concussed or something, he did not stop.
He finally got the phone, and he picked up this plastic cup of water that was there, and he threw it on the ground. The cup – a plastic cup – shattered. That was like how hard he threw it. Her room was always kind of like her sanctuary – I think, for a lot of kids, it is – and now, her bed is messed up because like he threw me on the bed. Her carpet is soaking wet. Her head hurts. All of these things. They were able to charge him with child abuse from that night, but she was the only protected party on the protection order because the boys– one of them was sleeping and the other one was just kind of in the doorway and didn’t physically get hurt.
Scott
So he got arrested. At that point, what did you actually want to have happened? Did you just want him to go away, be in prison and be done or just get a divorce?
Mae
I think, the night he was arrested, I really just wanted it to stop. I wasn’t thinking beyond any of that. I certainly wasn’t thinking that he was going to prison. It’s funny you say that because I had a counseling session, like, three days maybe after he was arrested, and it was with our marriage counselor. We had switched– we had a male marriage counselor now, and I’m telling him what happened, and he was like, “He’s going away for a long time.” I just started bawling and I was like, “What?” “No. There’s no way.” My friend was over, so I went downstairs – because it was a telehealth session – and I just fell into her arms, and I was like, “They say he’s going to go away for a long time.” And she was like, “Yeah, I think he is.” And – then I was like, “That’s not what I wanted. I wanted him genuinely–” and this sounds, I know, so naive and hopeful. “I just wanted him to be a better person. I wanted to still be married and have this life together that I thought we were going to have. I just wanted him to get better.”
Scott
It goes to court. First of all, he’s an attorney. Did he represent himself?
Mae
No, he did not. He did a lot of municipal law for little towns around us. The district attorney had told me who my ex’s defense counsel was, and he was like, “They went with the best of the best.” Unsurprisingly, they got, like, the best defense attorney that money can buy.
Scott
All right. Now, in court, one of the things that they brought up in defending him was the color of your underwear – that came into play – and this blew me away. What did they say?
Mae
Yeah, I was testifying and the defense attorney asked me what color my underwear was the night of his arrest, and I said it was red. And she asked further, “Was it like a matching set of bra and panties?” And I said yes. She asked if it was lingerie, and I said no, because it really wasn’t. It was just a red bra and underwear. She asked me, “Doesn’t a red bra and underwear indicate consent?” And the district attorney jumped up and objected, and it was overruled, or it was sustained. His objection was sustained. I didn’t have to answer that question. It came up again later in her questioning – I mean, that was the overt questioning – and the DA again, he said, “I want it on record for the court if this is the way the questioning is going, that red indicates consent and you can’t then charge somebody with a crime if the victim is wearing red.”
Our judge, I thought, was phenomenal, and she really kept control over everything and, kind of, I think, at that point, the attorneys approached the bench or something, but it was ludicrous, and I imagine that the jury agreed with that. The district attorney had told me at some point during the trial, it’s not a good look when the defense is attacking a victim and blaming a victim. The jury typically doesn’t like that.
Scott
They’re trying to defend behavior that’s indefensible, and to bring up something like “You were really giving consent by what you were wearing,” I mean, that had to be kind of a positive sign for the district attorney because it seems like they’re just grasping at straws. They’re trying anything even as silly as that to try to defend him. He was found guilty. Did they offer him any plea deals before that?
Mae
Yes. So throughout the process, the district attorney I felt was phenomenal, and he would include me in a lot of the process because he was saying that I was the one most affected. Right? So when they would talk about plea deals, he would call me and say, “This is kind of what we’re thinking. What do you think? We don’t want to minimize any of your experience.” There were a few plea deals that were offered and, for all of them, he would have had to plead guilty to at least one of the felonies. We felt like what had happened was felony level, right? I mean, obviously that’s how the charges were, but that he needed to plead guilty either to the felony sexual assault or the felony physical assault charges because one of his charges from the Pindustry night was a strangulation charge – they were very serious things. I said I want him to plead guilty to the misdemeanor child abuse charge because I want for the kids, for their experience to also be validated in all of this.
I think the best offer on the table at one point was the felony, sexual assault, and the misdemeanor child abuse. Plead guilty, probably no jail time, but there is some judicial discretion in there, and maybe three months in county jail, and every plea deal he would just say, “No, he didn’t do anything. No, no. no.” And I would imagine– I have really no idea, I’m not an attorney, but based on just logic, I would imagine that his attorneys were telling him to take the plea.
Scott
It seems like it’s a conflict from him thinking logically, “Yes, I can take the deal and be done with this pretty quickly,” but his ego overrode that.
Mae
Yeah, and his image. There’s no exact science to disbarment. He didn’t know if he’d be disbarred but he could have been disbarred, and admitting that he did something– what could that do to him and maybe his entire family and their firm? I don’t know how much pressure maybe he had from his family to do things one way or another. But yeah, it was a hill he was going to die on, that he did not do anything.
Scott
So he went to trial and, obviously, found guilty. What was his sentence?
Mae
He was sentenced to 12 years to life, and the reason it’s an indeterminate life sentence is, in order to be eligible for parole when you have sex crimes and domestic violence charges, at least where I am – I’m in Colorado – offenders have to work programs for both of those. There’s a sex offender program and then a domestic violence offender program.
Scott
While he’s in prison.
Mae
Correct. And the first part of both of those things is admitting what you did – writing letters to the people that you hurt and taking accountability, and he won’t do those things because he says he didn’t do anything. So that piece of it that makes it that he might not ever be eligible for parole if he doesn’t work the programs. The other part of it is – and the district attorney told me – things are ever-changing, but the way that the current climate is that, if he’s eligible in 12 years or whatever it is, and we go to the parole board and say, “Really, I don’t even have to have a reason, but I don’t feel safe with him being released, they are taking that heavily into consideration. My kids all wrote victim impact statements that were read at sentencing and if they were to say, “We don’t feel safe,” or, “We don’t feel comfortable,” whatever it is, and, “My ex was a very punitive person. I was punished constantly in the marriage when I filed for divorce.” And it was obvious to me.
He’s just trying to punish me, and I don’t feel like I’m that kind of person. I don’t feel like I’m very vengeful or out for blood about any of this. I think it’s all just very honest that he has shown that he is very unpredictable, and he has a lot of access to things. He had a lot of guns, and he did have to turn them over to his brother. He has access to these things. He, in my opinion, likely feels like he has nothing left to lose. That’s very scary for me and the kids. We hear about people killing their spouses, significant others, ex’es. I mean, I hear about it multiple times a week, and those are only the ones that I feel like are making the news. It’s a very scary thing, so we’ll see kind of how things play out. But yeah, it’s 12 years to life.
Scott
And it’s to your advantage, of course, that he’s still kind of holding out that, “I didn’t do anything,” and he’s not going to do those programs and write the letters or have any kind of remorse or anything. But a life sentence because he can’t– well, he’s just being who he is.
Mae
Yeah.
Scott
Yeah. Your kids are now 18, 14, and 9. How are they handling this? And do you think they’ll ever want to have any kind of relationship with their father?
Mae
We keep that door open, and we do talk about it. I mean, they were all in counseling, and it’s now more, as needed. We did family counseling. It is something that I still discuss because, like I said at the end of the day, that’s always their dad and I was never trying to erase him or replace him. I just needed him to be, like, a safe person for them to be around or to have a relationship with. So, at this point, they have decided they don’t want contact. The oldest is still on the protection order, and she could always ask to be removed if she wanted to.
One of the things that I have tried to communicate very clearly with the kids – and part of why it comes up again is because I want them to really know this – is I will never be upset with them if they choose to have a relationship with their father, ever. It doesn’t hurt me. It doesn’t make me insecure in my relationship with them. These two things are separate. I have a relationship with my father and I love my dad, and I don’t want to take that away from them if that is something that they want. And I imagine as they go through different ages and stages, it might come up for them in different ways. I don’t know – my oldest is graduating and going to college – if she’s going to even bring him up. Might she say, “He’s deceased?” I don’t know. She might say he’s in prison. She might say he’s not around. I don’t know what that’s going to look like. I just need them to know – and I remind them too – that none of this was their fault, ever. These were his actions and all of those things. But they’ve come a long way.
It was so hard. I mean, there were months of them crawling into bed with me every night crying and not going to school. My youngest had a very real fear that, actually, my ex-in-laws were going to kidnap him. He didn’t want to go on school field trips. He didn’t want to ever– if I walked outside to get the mail, he would have a panic attack. He’s like “Oh, no, did they get my mom too?” It was really hard for a long time, but they have come so far. I mean, we all have, but they’re incredible
Scott
You have written a book about this, and the book goes into a lot more detail about the idea of how the system failed you and the betrayal of your in-laws, because there was a long time that you trusted them. So people can get all that. The book is called “An Embarrassment of Pandas: Exposing an Abusive Family and a Flawed System.” Where did that title come from?
Mae
A group of pandas is called an embarrassment. Just about every group of animal has a name. When we were married in that nuclear family, pandas were a big part of our family. We actually went with my in-laws to the San Diego Zoo to see the pandas. My kids loved pandas. It was the youngest. We didn’t find out the gender. They called him a panda. They just were a prevalent animal. When all of this happened– and I’ll clarify too for listeners, the criminal justice system actually didn’t fail me, which is maybe surprising because a lot of people are failed by the criminal justice system. It was the civil courts and the divorce courts that very much was the issue with that and the betrayal from my in-laws because, like I mentioned, I called them always. There was a reason I had never called the police until the night that I did.
I called them. They came over. They intervened. They talked him down. They were slipping me cash, trying to help me get in a position where maybe I could leave him. I mean, they knew everything. They were keeping an eye on him at work to make sure he was working. When I called the police, they just said, “Nope, I’ve never heard any of this. What? She’s making it all up. She brainwashed her children into saying that, that they saw and heard these things. None of this is true.” That hurt more than anything that my ex ever did because I knew who he was. But for some reason, I was thinking that he was like an anomaly, whereas really that’s what that whole family is. Right? They are all very narcissistic, very enmeshed, very abusive, very delusional in their perception of reality in all of this. So I felt like their behavior during this was very embarrassing, and I just felt like pandas were important to us. Like, a group of pandas is already called an embarrassment, and so the title just seemed very fitting.
Scott
It gets people’s attention for sure as well. All right. Well, people can contact you through your website, maescottofficial.com, or by email. We’re going to have links to all of those things as well as your socials in the episode notes. What’s your reason for wanting to get your story out there?
Mae
There were a couple reasons. The first most motivating one to me was, when I was going through all of this, I felt so alone. You asked earlier about support. I have incredible family and friends. I have so much support, and I am eternally grateful, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t have all of them – that is for sure – and I still felt so alone. I felt like nobody had ever gone through this before, and if they had, they certainly weren’t talking about it because there’s a lot of shame in those things too. I wanted to help people feel seen, that, “Hey, you’re not alone. Even though my story is not your story, there are those common threads and elements that come with toxic relationships or unhealthy things and betrayals and navigating court systems.” So that was my initial motivation – to help other people that maybe were in the same boat as me.
And then the second part – I mean, I know I said I’m not out for vengeance, and I’m not – I wanted people to know what he and his family did because they are still hiding behind this image of we’re perfect. But it’s like, “No.” And you know what? If you don’t want somebody to talk about these things, maybe you shouldn’t do those things. But I have been very transparent and honest about– my part in any and all of it, of even saying from a young age, “Hey, that wasn’t fair of me to get in a relationship with someone that I didn’t really know, that I just wanted to mold into this person that I wanted him to be. That’s not fair for me. I called him names. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t right. I can point out all of my part in this and take accountability, and I do that in the book.” And for them to say that they were just perfect and this perfect image, I’m like, “No, I’m sorry, you guys are going to be exposed a little bit about your part in this,” because I just feel like they should. And that, to me, was kind of gratifying also because they don’t get to just deflect more and point fingers when the truth is that they need to look inside themselves.
Scott
It’s all out there, yeah. Is there any part of this that you want to talk about that I haven’t brought up?
Mae
I don’t think so. I mean, we could probably do a whole other episode on family court, but that’s not – no offense – almost not as interesting. Right? It’s kind of boring. Kind of crazy things, but not as interesting.
Scott
Yeah. But do you go over that in the book too?
Mae
Yeah.
Scott
Okay. Yes. All right. Mae, you are an amazing woman. Thanks for sharing your story.
Mae
Thank you so much for this platform to do that too. And I thank all of your listeners too. I mean, you have a phenomenal podcast. I had no idea how deep it all went until we were kind of connected by Bill, and I was looking– there are some wild stories on here. So yeah, thank you for bringing that to light.
Scott
If you or someone you know is in a situation of domestic violence or abuse, you’re not alone and you don’t have to be stuck there. Mae passed along a LOT of resources designed specifically to help people in that kind of situation. A few are specific to Colorado since that’s where she lives, but most of them offer help to just about anyone. Links to all of those things, as well as Mae’s email address for anyone who would like to contact her directly, are in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/257.
When Mae sent me her story, part of what was included was her brief bio. This is what it says:
I’m Mae Scott, and I’m just me.
I am a hard-working, dedicated mother of three vibrant humans.
I am a social worker by trade.
I am a survivor by circumstance.
I am an advocate, writer, speaker, and supporter by choice.
I was trapped in an abusive marriage and controlling family for nearly 19 years, and I am now a free woman. Everyone deserves freedom. Everyone deserves peace.
Well said, Mae.
And I want to say thanks to my friend Bill Mitchell. He’s the host of the When Dating Hurts podcast, and he has conversations with survivors of domestic abuse all the time. Mae told her story on his show, and he then said she should contact me about being a guest on What Was That Like. Bill’s a great guy, and an amazing advocate. To find his show, just search for When Dating Hurts on any podcast app.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And now it’s Listener Story time! We end every main episode with a story that was sent in by a listener. These are about 5-10 minutes long, and it’s just something interesting that happened to you. And we’d love to hear YOUR story. Just record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@whatwasthatlike.com.
This listener talks about a scary incident with her baby.
Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.
(Listener Story)
My story takes place about two years ago when my daughter was six months old. My husband and I are first-time parents, so we’re navigating all the firsts together, and thankfully, most of those are really happy, exciting, and sweet. However, this one night was really scary. We were co-sleeping up until this point, so she, my daughter, was new to her crib. However, she was doing great, and we chose to keep the crib in our room. This one night, I woke up to gurgling and, before my brain even comprehended what was happening, I was already standing up, reaching in to grab my daughter from her crib, and she was choking on her vomit – I don’t know for how long – which was probably the scariest moment because you think of the worst. Is she inhaling this? For how long has she been struggling?
So I flipped her over and she threw up four more times – projectile vomited. I didn’t know a little body could hold that much liquid. The whole time this was happening, I heard no crying. There was no breath in between, and so I’m like “What is going on?” because she has never thrown up before. She wasn’t even a drooly baby. I mean, no acid reflux, no problems. Truly a perfect baby.
I just ran her into the bathroom and cleaned her up and was looking at her. When she was finally done throwing up, she did cry, and it was music to my ears that she was breathing. She looked okay. I checked her stomach and her chest and everything looked fine. Her lips looked healthy. They weren’t blue or anything, thankfully. But I did rush her right away to the– we have a children’s emergency care here, which was wonderful, and so we went there. Maybe I was overreacting, but we had to wait in the waiting room for a long time, and I was so anxious the whole time. Thankfully, though, my baby was acting fine, as if nothing had ever happened, and I’m over here growing white hairs like crazy.
So they finally take us back, and they say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her, and she’s fine. Obviously, I was so relieved to hear that, but it was just so out of character for her that I was worried that maybe something more could be wrong. They said it’s probably just acid reflux. I took her home and I didn’t sleep for the next two nights, but she has never thrown up again since, and I’m so incredibly grateful for all this time I’ve got with her.
She’s so smart. She knows her planets, and she can count, and she knows her alphabet, and she’s talking up a storm. I’m just really thankful we chose to keep her crib in her room because I can’t imagine the alternative of what could have happened if she wasn’t and I didn’t hear her. Hold your babies close. Thank you for listening.