Samantha had just become a doula when she was messaged on Instagram by her first client, a 24-year-old woman saying she thought she was going into labor.
The woman, Kaitlyn Braun, told Samantha that her contractions were 10 minutes apart, and then 8 minutes, the doula told Cosmopolitan in September. Doulas, women who don’t usually have formal obstetric training who are hired to guide and support pregnant women through labor, don’t typically arrive so early during labor. But because Braun had said she learned about her pregnancy late in the process and that the child was conceived out of a sexual assault, Samantha asked if Braun wanted her to come over and begin helping.
“I really want to say yes because these are intense, but I feel bad because I’m sure you’re probably busy,” Braun reportedly told Samantha.
Samantha, feeling that the young woman was too afraid to ask for help, immediately drove to Braun’s home. Samantha told Cosmopolitan that she had no reason to doubt Braun, who is overweight, was pregnant. Braun lived in a two-bedroom apartment with her mother, had a car seat in the living room, a sleeper seat in her bedroom, baby clothes, and a breast pump – all things a struggling woman would have if she were going to give birth.
Just hours after Samantha arrived at the apartment, Braun says something is leaking out of her body. Samantha tells Braun that her water is probably breaking. For the next two days, Braun labors at home with Samantha by her side, the rookie doula taking few breaks and caring for Braun’s every need.
At the end of the second day, Samantha wanted Braun to go to the hospital, but her mother resisted. Eventually, Samantha called the hospital for advice, fearing Braun was at risk of a serious infection, and was told to bring Braun in immediately, so she did. Samantha drove Braun herself, something doulas aren’t supposed to do, believing Braun couldn’t afford a taxi. Once in Samantha’s car, Braun began wailing, telling the doula to just leave and forget about her.
Samantha pulled over and called her mentor, who then spoke to Braun and convinced her to go to the hospital. Once there, however, Braun refused to get out of the car, and Samantha said she threatened to get a staffer – something she never wanted to do as a doula but felt she had been given no choice.
Braun then questioned whether her water had actually broken, or if what was leaking out of her was liquid trapped behind a mucus plug. If that were the case, Braun wasn’t at risk of infection, so Samantha did what the young woman wanted and drove her home. Braun then asked if Samantha would meet her at the hospital when she actually goes into labor.
Days later, Braun called and again said she was having contractions, so Samantha went through the entire process again of driving Braun to the hospital and persuading her to get out of the car. An ob-gyn performed an ultrasound but quickly stopped. She told Braun that there was no pregnancy and the only thing in her uterus was an IUD.
The doctor offered to call Braun a social worker or psychiatrist, but Braun demanded to go home, telling Samantha on the ride that she was “so confused.”
At this point, Samantha didn’t know whether Braun had faked everything or had a hysterical pregnancy, but she treated her like a woman who had believed she was pregnant but was not – and who felt as though she had lost a child.
Except, Braun was lying, and she continued to twist and expand on her original pregnancy story to many more doulas. The names of the doulas in these stories were changed by Cosmo to protect their identities.
During her next con, Braun was a queer sexual assault survivor shunned by her family, in labor at 32 weeks delivering a stillborn. Two doulas, referred to as Rachel and Nora, offered Braun support over the phone. Rachel said she could hear car sounds as Braun allegedly rode to the hospital during the ordeal, and heartbeat monitor sounds once she was there.
Braun continued to go through the stillbirth for the two doulas, who said that about 45 minutes after the alleged birth, Braun said she had to have an emergency dilation and curettage (D&C), a procedure that removes tissue from inside the uterus. Braun told the women she would need a hysterectomy because she wouldn’t stop bleeding. The two doulas counseled her through the immense loss of losing a child and then her uterus.
In the days following the alleged stillbirth, Braun told the women she was being transferred to a new hospital, and then another hospital, because the bleeding wouldn’t stop. She then tells the women she was diagnosed with a clotting disorder and late-stage pelvic cancer. The doulas say they are no longer the professionals Braun needs, but continue to offer her support as she weighs her options before deciding to stop treatment, which would mean she would die in three months.
These two doulas told Cosmo they were sexual assault survivors, so they understood when Braun said she didn’t want them to call the police about a male doctor who allegedly violated her while trying to stop her from bleeding.
While being transferred to yet another hospital, Braun told the women over the phone that the male doctor was in the ambulance with her, gave his name, and then enacted an alleged rape before she hung up the phone. Rachel looked up the man’s name and found that he was a real doctor at the hospital. At the next hospital, Braun said the doctor raped her again but was caught by a nurse and the police were now involved. She told the women what the doctor did to her in graphic detail and said he seemed to enjoy the fact that he was ripping out her stitches.
The person Rachel was dating at the time reached out to reporters about the doctor’s arrest, but they could find no record of any police report. At that point, the doulas began to question Braun’s story.
Braun then said she was pushing out chunks of a tumor and even sent a photo of a piece of a tumor, which Nora reverse-image searched and found it was from a Wikipedia article. They then found the images Braun had sent of her stillborn child, which they found on the first page of Google’s search results. Rachel then called the hospital where Braun was allegedly staying, but they had no record of her as a patient. The women then called the police to conduct a welfare check.
A couple hours later, the police called back to say they found Braun in her living room and that she was fine.
Braun would go on to con dozens of other doulas, at one point peeing in front of one to say her water broke, and faking voices of friends to con another. Doulas began posting their stories online and helping others who had been contacted by Braun to realize they were being duped.
In March, Braun was charged with 32 counts of fraud, sexual assault, false pretenses, indecent acts, and criminal harassment in relation to at least six of the doulas she conned, the Daily Mail reported. Some of the doulas reported they were traumatized by their experience with Braun, with one alleged victim, Amy Perry, telling CTV News she helped Braun for free.
“The moans, the sounds she made were really realistic, even through the last stage of labor – through transition – she would even go as far as to vomit, which is the normal thing,” Perry told the outlet. “We really felt that there was an individual who was alone in the world going through something really horrible and we were just willing to put the scope of our practice aside and help her.”
In May, 17 victims pressed charges against Braun, CTV News reported, bringing the total number of offenses to 52. Braun is in jail awaiting trial.