A Conversation with RAINN | BONUS | Saskia’s Story

Summary

Podcast Summary: Betrayal Season 5 – A Conversation with RAINN | BONUS | Saskia’s Story

---

Overview

This special bonus episode of Betrayal dives into the importance of responsible storytelling when addressing sensitive topics such as sexual violence, child abuse, and trauma. Host Andrea Gunning sits down with Jennifer Simmons Caleba, Vice President of Communications for RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), to discuss how the show strives to evolve its approach to survivor-centered narratives, the necessity of accurate language, and ongoing collaboration with RAINN. The episode candidly explores the challenges of telling stories that matter, elevating survivor autonomy, and fostering understanding within the audience.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Role of RAINN and Collaboration with "Betrayal"

• Introduction to RAINN: As the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, RAINN’s mission is to raise awareness, educate, and provide resources for survivors and their loved ones.

  • Jennifer Simmons Caleba: “My role is to ensure that people are more aware and educated about what sexual violence is... the resources are there, that they are not alone...” (03:26)

• Entertainment Industry Engagement: RAINN collaborates with studios, producers, and podcasts like "Betrayal" to ensure responsible depictions of sexual violence.

  • “We did a responsible storytelling training session with you. We've worked with you when it comes to interviewing survivors during season five of Betrayal... to be a part of both the education and also the advancement of this responsible storytelling.” (04:01)

Evolving Language and Creator Responsibility

• Reflection and Growth: The team acknowledges past episodes that might not fully align with evolving standards and considers how creators should approach their archives.
  • “What type of obligation do creators and writers have to address that work if it’s outdated culturally with language?” (04:40)
  • Jennifer: “Give themselves a degree of grace for what they knew at the time... if they get it really wrong, that they have some sort of clear discussion or apology... and then move forward and change the behavior...” (05:13)

Language Choices: "Victim" vs. "Survivor"

• Survivor Agency and Language Use:
  • Jennifer: “The hard and fast rule is it’s what the person wants to be called and respecting that... if you get it wrong... you say you’re sorry, you change it.” (06:36)
  • Andrea highlights that a survivor’s self-understanding can shift over time, making it essential to maintain open, ongoing dialogue about preferred language (06:54).

Terminology and Transparency: Talking About CSAM and Sexual Violence

• Clarity and Progress in Language:

  • Discuss how industry euphemisms hinder understanding, and the importance of calling crimes what they are.
  • Jennifer: “When you say ‘child sexual abuse material’ for the person who has no connection, they have no idea what that actually means... explaining and breaking down why the sentence doesn’t work, but acknowledging that people may need to see that to make that next connection is important.” (08:03)

• Progress in Naming Sexual Violence Directly:

  • Jennifer recounts how, in the past, networks couldn’t say “rape” on TV, but now, even individuals unconnected to advocacy can identify and name sexual violence directly, as seen in Saskia’s story.
  • “That is progress. You go from not talking about rape... to an everyday individual... naming it immediately.” (09:40)

Telling Stories With Multiple Victims: Avoiding Comparative Trauma

• Balancing Perspectives and Emphasizing Individual Experience:
  • Producer Caitlin discusses learning to avoid comparative trauma, especially in stories with multiple victims (10:03).
  • Jennifer: “I think about it as a handful of different size rocks that you throw into water. No matter the size of the rock, there is a ripple. But every single person is the center of their own ripple... their ripples matter to that person at the center of them.” (10:58)

The Purpose and Impact of Storytelling

• Intentionality and Connection:
  • Andrea: “The clarity for me is purpose... If one person feels less alone by listening to this, we've done our job...” (12:40)
  • Jennifer builds on the idea that hearing diverse perspectives helps listeners find connection and understanding amidst difficult experiences (12:24).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Growth and Responsibility:

  • Jennifer Simmons Caleba: “Give themselves a degree of grace for what they knew at the time and for the best that they were doing at a time... If they get it really wrong, that they have some sort of clear discussion or apology... and then they move forward and change the behavior...” (05:13)

• On Survivor Agency:

  • Jennifer: “The hard and fast rule is it’s what the person wants to be called and respecting that and respecting what it means to them.” (06:36)

• On Language Evolution:

  • Jennifer: “It struck me, one of [Saskia’s] friends saw the videos and instantly the words that came out of her mouth were, 'she’s being raped.'... That is progress.” (09:40)

• On Comparative Trauma:

  • Jennifer: “Every single person is feeling a impact, feeling a ramification, an emotion. They’re all coming to it from their own center of the story... we can stop comparing the trauma of other people and then just start thinking about the individual humans involved.” (10:58)

• On Purpose:

  • Andrea: “If one person feels less alone by listening to this, we've done our job because that was the intention going into the project.” (12:40)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:26] — RAINN’s mission and Jennifer’s role
• [04:01] — How RAINN works with entertainment creators for responsible storytelling
• [05:13] — Obligation of creators to address outdated or harmful language in past content
• [06:36] — Survivor-preferred language and its evolving nature
• [08:03] — Breaking down terminology and the importance of direct language (“rape”, “CSAM”)
• [09:40] — Progress in public discussion and identification of sexual violence, as seen in Saskia’s case
• [10:58] — Approaching stories with multiple victims and the ripple metaphor for trauma
• [12:40] — The core purpose of “Betrayal”: intentional, impactful storytelling to help listeners feel less alone

---

Tone & Language

The episode balances gravity with hopefulness. Both Andrea and Jennifer speak candidly, with warmth and intentionality, underscoring the need for compassion, respect, and continual growth in the field of media storytelling about trauma and sexual violence.

---

This episode provides valuable insight for both creators and listeners into best practices for handling sensitive stories and furthers the cultural conversation around justice, survivor agency, and narrative responsibility.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Andrea Gunning]

This episode is sponsored by Virgin Voyages. There's something about the ocean. It creates space. And sometimes space is exactly what you need. Virgin Voyages is adults only. No kids, no chaos, no buffets. Just beautifully designed spaces, award winning food and room to actually breathe. Over 20 restaurants are included, plus entertainment, Wi Fi, fitness classes all covered. No surprises. No emotional or financial whiplash. It's not just a vacation. It's perspective. It's reset. It's choosing yourself. And sometimes that's the bravest thing you can do. Plan your [e-mail] when it comes to advancing your education, you have more options than you think. At Rasmussen University they find ways to remove barriers, not build them like a new laptop if you're eligible and enroll in select online or on campus programs. That also means flexible and engaging online courses and resources, tuition saving options if you qualify, exceptional student support and much more online nationally or check out their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit Rasmussen. Edu Spring isn't just about clearing clutter. It's about changing the air. Pura makes it easy to refresh your space, your mindset and how your home feels with transportive fragrances inspired by a terrace in Santorini, a French lavender field and more. Get started with a free Pura plus diffuser when you subscribe to Two Cents Monthly for six months. Shop [e-mail] if you're feeling off fatigue,

[Sponsor Voice]

mood changes, skin shifts, yet your labs say everything's normal. You're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance, the first all in one prescription strength bioidentical hormone cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop, 10 seconds a day. Oester replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance.com today to start feeling like yourself again. That's innerbalance.com.

[Producer Caitlin]

Foreign

[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal. Today we have another bonus episode on our show. We tackle sensitive topics from rape and child sexual abuse to financial fraud and identity theft. We handle this work with a lot of care, using trauma, informed interviewing techniques, consulting mental health experts, and communicating with our subjects in every step of production. But we're always trying to do better and to evolve as our culture evolves. That's why last year we reached out to rainn, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Throughout season five, they've been advising us on ways to approach our work with survivors. Recently, I sat down with Jennifer Simmons Caleba. She's rainn's vice president of communications. I wanted to share a bit of our conversation with you and to give you a look into the kinds of conversations we're often having at betrayal. I hope you enjoy. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your position at rainn and what rainn is?

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

RAINN is the nation's largest antisexual violence organization. I'm the vice president of communications. So my role is to ensure that people are more aware and educated about what sexual violence is. And the work that I get to do is. Is make sure that more people understand that the resources are there, that they are not alone, and that if you or somebody in your life has experienced sexual violence, that you have people to turn to.

[Andrea Gunning]

How would you define rainn's role in working with betrayal?

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

So one of the things that rainn does is we work with entertainment companies and studios and producers to insert and establish responsible and relevant storytelling in the journey of making people more aware through storytelling about sexual violence. So we worked with you guys. We did a responsible storytelling training session with you. We've worked with you when it comes to interviewing survivors during season five of betrayal. And it's just been such a pleasure to be able to be a part of both the education and also the advancement of this responsible storytelling that you guys are doing at betrayal.

[Andrea Gunning]

You know, when I look back on the canon of betrayal, there are certain things that our team would probably write differently today. I'm curious, from your point of view, when you look back on a body of work that still survives and exists in the world and is there for people to meet it at any given time, what type of obligation do creators and writers have to address that work? If it's outdated culturally with language like, what do you feel is the obligation of those producers and creators?

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

It's a really interesting question, particularly for something that you put out into the world and then still have some measure of control over. You produce a movie or a film, you produce a book, and it goes out there, and the level of effort that it would take to recut, redo, republish, all of that is a challenge. But for serialized shows like yours, the question of going back and looking at the things that you wish you had done differently is a really valid one. And I think what I hope people who are creating this kind of content do is that they give themselves a degree of grace for what they knew at the time and for the best that they were doing at a Time. And that if they get it really wrong, that they have some sort of clear discussion or apology or, hey, I. That really was not what I wanted to do. And then they move forward and change the behavior, and then they change how they approach, because that's really the measure and that's really where the learning happens.

[Andrea Gunning]

Yeah. I think one of the places that we often struggle with is the language around victim and survivor. And I'm curious if there is like a hard and fast rule for you in terms of that language. Yeah.

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

The hard and fast rule is it's what the person wants to be called and respecting that and respecting what it means to them. And then the idea that if you get it wrong, you say that somebody is something that they don't feel they want to be, you change it. You say you're sorry, you change it.

[Andrea Gunning]

It's interesting because we tell stories over 10 episodes, and in those 10 episodes where we're talking about one person's story, it's one person's journey. So episode to episode, they can be in a different place in relation to what happened to them. And that language can be tricky to know. And I think you're validating something for me, which is having constant conversations with our storytellers, to be like, at this point in the story, how would you identify? You know?

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

Yeah.

[Andrea Gunning]

But also holding in consideration where the audience is meeting this person in this journey too. So for season two of Betrayal, I remember a big discussion was, does our audience know what CSAM is? And does our audience know why we can't say what people would colloquially say? That material is curious what your thoughts are. Even just saying it as a manner of explaining and showing why we're not going that route, like, how. How do you feel about that?

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

We talk about this with media training a lot. So I'm going to say the words that people will say. So you're going to say kitty porn. That's what cc, it's kitty porn. No, no, no, no. But when you say child sexual abuse material for the person who has no connection, they have no idea what that actually means. But you know that that person, if they knew what it meant, they'd be like, oh, my God, that's horrible. So, like, explaining and breaking down why the sentence doesn't work, but acknowledging that people may need to see that to make that next connection is important. And that's something that in the media, people are now getting really comfortable with. But if we go back to the beginnings of rain in the 90s, when we were trying to get People to recognize that this issue was important. Networks weren't saying rape on tv, right? And it's so important. So you know euphemisms around rape as a storytelling device because you couldn't say the words. So how important is it to be able to say, you know, all these, all these kind of workaround phrases, what you're actually talking about is rape. And that's actually something I saw with Saskia this season. And it struck me, one of her friends saw the videos and instantly the words that came out of her mouth were, she's being raped. There was no hesitation, no working around it, no, her husband is doing something terrible to nothing. She was raped. That is progress. You go from not talking about rape, not saying the word rape 30 some odd years ago, to a everyday individual who is looking at something happening through the lens too, of intimate partner violence and naming it, naming it immediately. That's the kind of progress we're talking about.

[Andrea Gunning]

Then my producer Caitlin chimed in.

[Producer Caitlin]

In season three, we were telling the story from the perspective of both Stacy and Tyler. Tyler being a child victim of sexual abuse and Stacy being a mother who had her life absolutely torn apart by what her husband did to her son. I think as a show, we've changed our approach a little bit in how we've learned to balance the perspectives of multiple victims without getting into that comparative trauma piece. And I also think as creators, we struggle with, well, are there ways we could have done even better as storytellers in doing right by the victim of child abuse? So at rainn, when you think about that issue of how do you tell stories from the perspectives of multiple victims? What are some of the strategies that

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

come to mind to the point of comparative trauma in any kind of storytelling? I think about it as a handful of different size rocks that you throw into water. No matter the size of the rock, there is a ripple. But every single person is the center of their own ripple. Every single person is feeling a impact, feeling a ramification, an emotion. They're all coming to it from their own center of the story. And as long as we acknowledge that everybody's ripples matter to that person at the center of them, then we can stop comparing the trauma of other people and then just start thinking about the individual humans involved.

[Andrea Gunning]

To me, it's not a zero sum. There's space for every version of this conversation, and that's something that we're often discussing. You know, I knew that the way that Stacy in season three, the way that she talked about her ex husband, would be really difficult for people to hear. But I also knew that there were people who were alone in bed in the middle of the night, staring at their ceiling, thinking, I just wish my life could go back to before times, before the knowing, before everything came apart.

[Jennifer Simmons Caleba]

It was the version of my life where I didn't have to be wrestling with all of these terrible thoughts and feelings. And yeah, the purpose of all of these different viewpoints is really what do you want people in the end to be able to connect to?

[Andrea Gunning]

The clarity for me is purpose is just doing it intentionally. What is the purpose if one person feels less alone by listening to this? We've done our job because that was the intention going into the project. Yeah, well, thank you for everything that you do and thank you for everything that Rainn does and contributes. And thank you for contributing to betrayal. When it comes to advancing your education, you have more options than you think. At Rasmussen University they find ways to remove barriers, not build them like a new laptop if you're eligible and enroll in select online or on campus programs. That also means flexible and engaging online courses and resources, tuition saving options if you qualify, exceptional student support and much more online nationally or check out their 20 campuses across six states. Start when you're ready and get the support you need. Visit Rasmussen.

[Podcast Host]

Edu Dryness is one of the biggest challenges for curly hair and many products. They clock out after wash day. The new Ultra Moisture collection was literally designed with our hair in mind. Curls, coils, all of it powered by Botano oil and Jamaican Black Castor oil. Which means the science is actually doing the work. Clinically proven to help retain moisture for up to five days. This means non stop moisture for up to five whole days. The shampoo gently cleanses without stripping. The mask deeply conditions and helps reduce breakage. The leave in adds rich moisturization with hyaluronic acid and the curl cream wraps every curl in luxurious hydration with long lasting definition. No sulfates, no parabens, no silicones, no mineral oils. Just nourishment without the compromise. Because here's the thing, your hair deserves products that actually understand it. Moisture that starts at the root and keeps going well past wash day. That's the Ultra Moisture collection from Cantu. Explore their full line. Built for every curl pattern, every hair routine. Available now at Walmart. Go get it.

[Andrea Gunning]

This episode is sponsored by Virgin Voyages. There's something about the ocean. It creates space. And sometimes space is exactly what you need. Virgin Voyages is adults only. No kids, no chaos, no buffets, just beautifully designed spaces, award winning food and room to actually breathe. Over 20 restaurants are included, plus entertainment, Wi Fi, fitness classes, all covered. No surprises. No emotional or financial whiplash. It's not just a vacation. It's perspective. It's reset. It's choosing yourself. And sometimes that's the bravest thing you can do. Plan your escape@virgin voyages.com if you're feeling

[Sponsor Voice]

off fatigue, mood changes, skin shifts, yet your labs say everything's normal. You're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance, the first all in one prescription strength bioidentical hormone cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop, 10 seconds a day. Oestra replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance. Com today to start feeling like yourself again. That's innerbalance. Com.

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.