The Girlfriends S5/Bonus Ep 1: Get Back Down Here Off Your High Horse

About this episode

The episode explores the stigma surrounding romance fraud through interviews and media coverage of Derek's case.

In the years leading up to Derek’s conviction, his victims sometimes came forward to the media about their experiences. But when they did so, the reaction from the public wasn’t always sympathetic. In bonus episode one, Anna takes a closer look at the stigma that surrounds romance fraud with journalist Rachel Monroe, who covered Derek’s sentencing for The Atlantic back in 2018. In this four part mini-series, we take a deep dive into our archive of never before heard interviews, to take a closer look at the key themes that underpinned Trust Me Babe. If you’re affected by any of the themes in this show, our charity partners NO MORE have available resources at https://www.nomore.org. To learn more about romance scams, and to access specialised support, visit https://fightcybercrime.org/ The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/. You can listen to new episodes of The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe completely ad-free and 1 week early with an iHeart True Crime+ subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “iHeart True Crime+, and subscribe today!

People in this episode

Host: Anna

Guest: Rachel Monroe

Topics covered

• romance fraud
• victim experiences
• media coverage
• stigma
• true crime
• interviews

Keywords

• romance fraud
• victims
• media
• stigma
• Derek
• interviews
• true crime

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Atlantic, NO MORE, Novel, iHeart Podcasts

Books & works: The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe

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• Introducing The Girlfriends: Flight or Fight · August 17, 2026 · 3 min
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