Original subtitles

TINA: Neil was charismatic and witty.

Just a nice, normal man.

- That was the ruse.

[dramatic music]

NEIL: There's something very strange about this baby.

You can keep the baby.

Great for you.

But it ain't mine, darling.

It seriously, seriously isn't mine.

♪ ♪

- Tina was in absolute shock.

- I've spoken to probably 200 people

who Neil traumatized.

♪ ♪

I've had to pretty much talk girls off the ledge.

- I didn't realize the gravity of the situation

that I escaped from.

- Everything he told me was a lie.

- I've never seen anything as extreme as this.

♪ ♪

- [distorted] I would like him to suffer slowly, tortuously.

- Someone really needs to stop him.

♪ ♪

[tense music]

♪ ♪

[soft music]

ANDREA: I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal,

a show about the people we trust the most

and the deceptions that change everything.

Today I'm talking with Tina Maia,

a strong, independent woman whose casual fling

turned her world upside down.

When she tried to understand what happened to her,

she ended up forming a community of women

that were all deceived by the same man.

Can you talk a little bit about the scope of what Neil did?

- He just hides behind being this normal guy.

But his lies are so damaging.

They're so eroding, and it's been going on

for, like, 30-something years.

- Wow.

- There's a whole load of people that think,

oh, well, you know, how did you go for that?

But this is my truth.

This is my story.

[soft music]

♪ ♪

I was born in Tehran before the revolution in 1975,

and things got a little real over there

when I was quite young.

So we moved back to the UK

because my father was born there.

[light music]

♪ ♪

I lived in a very nice place.

I had great friends, good education.

♪ ♪

- Tina's full of life, carefree.

♪ ♪

TINA: After I graduated university,

I was starting my career in the technology world,

and I just sort of had to figure out

what this internet was.

[laughs]

ANDREA: Tina ends up in New York City

with a high-paying job,

and she's there for about ten years.

She gets married, has a baby, gets divorced.

And then in 2015, she gets a great job offer in London,

and she decides to move home.

[soft music]

- I was just sort of starting again,

just me and my son, Leo.

He was six.

DEENA: She was working in e-commerce,

and she was very business-minded.

♪ ♪

TINA: So it was very early 2016.

I was at one of these conferences in London.

I was speaking with a lot of people,

and that's where I stumbled across Neil Lawman.

[light music]

He had a marketing firm.

He was cute, quite attractive.

But I really didn't think too much about that conversation.

He just seemed like a nice, normal man.

ANDREA: Neil Lawman is from Essex.

It's a tough, working class area outside of London.

He's a successful businessman,

and he even has an interesting hobby.

He loves cooking and appears in YouTube videos.

- If you cooked this, I'd actually

come round for dinner and let you cook for me.

- Would you spoon me afterwards?

- Why not?

- [laughs]

- Tina had no desire for a relationship,

but after the conference,

Neil texted her out of the blue.

[soft music]

TINA: He said that he was going to be in Bromley,

a town close to where I lived,

and did I want to meet up?

I was in a good mood, and Leo was at a sleepover,

and Neil seems like he might be good fun for a drink.

Um, OK.

♪ ♪

He was charismatic and witty.

He was a fun guy.

♪ ♪

I told him a little bit about my divorce,

and he said that he was divorced also,

and they lived together in the States too.

And he said that his ex-wife had got quite bitter

about the fact that he couldn't give her children.

♪ ♪

He said, "I had testicular cancer,

and I'm completely infertile."

And he said his ex-wife had an affair with his friend

and left him for the friend

and gone on to have children with him.

I felt like he was being, you know,

quite vulnerable and genuine.

It actually drew me to him.

ANDREA: Tina starts seeing Neil more often.

She still has no desire for a relationship,

but she's having fun with him, and she's enjoying the sex.

[uplifting music]

TINA: That was part of what it was

and part of what was fun.

- She didn't need to live like a nun.

They're two consenting adults.

Have fun.

♪ ♪

- Even though he told me he was infertile,

I was still worried,

because having another child was not in my plan.

♪ ♪

He was like, "No, like, I have zero sperm count."

♪ ♪

But he had sort of dropped into conversation

about having a lot of allergies,

and one of those allergies was latex,

and so he couldn't use protection.

♪ ♪

ANDREA: Over the next few months,

Tina sees Neil sporadically.

TINA: We would see each other once a week or so.

He told me a bit about his family.

He didn't come from money, but I didn't care.

- He came up in passing, some guy she'd been seeing.

I never for a minute thought that he was

going to play a part in her life.

[tense music]

- Tina started noticing things about Neil

that were off-putting.

TINA: I heard him have a phone conversation with his mother,

and he was being so awful to her.

And then there was the lying.

♪ ♪

He was clearly lying about his education.

He told me he went to the London School of Economics.

No, you didn't, because I know the area quite well.

We were talking about it,

and he didn't seem to know even where LSE was.

♪ ♪

So it was these little things.

ANDREA: Just as Tina's hoping

that this relationship with Neil fades away,

she starts to experience this familiar

but concerning brain fog.

♪ ♪

- I started to be quite forgetful.

♪ ♪

I remember one particular incident

where I threw the rubbish away,

and then I couldn't find my keys.

I'm like, did I not throw the rubbish out,

but I threw my keys in the wheelie bin?

♪ ♪

Yes, I'd thrown my keys in the wheelie bin.

And I said, that's weird, because the only time

I've ever been that absent-minded

is when I was pregnant with Leo.

♪ ♪

And then my period was late, so I got a pregnancy test.

Immediately popped up: pregnant.

♪ ♪

I was like, well, no, I can't be pregnant.

Bought a few more.

That didn't work.

♪ ♪

I thought, Neil doesn't know

he can have children.

DEENA: I thought maybe it's a medical mistake

or it was truly a miracle.

♪ ♪

- Tina decides to keep the baby and reaches out to Neil.

[dramatic music]

- And then he really got quite venomous.

NEIL: I cannot produce children.

If you are pregnant,

how you deal with it is not my problem.

♪ ♪

[tense music]

- I had intercourse with somebody

who I knew was infertile,

and I was pregnant.

♪ ♪

So I sent him a text saying,

"We should meet up, and we can have a chat."

He was like, "I don't see why--

"if you've got something to tell me,

why you can't tell me here."

I'm like, "OK. I am pregnant.

"It's yours.

"I don't want anything from you,

but I'm letting you know."

He said, "Nice try.

I had a vasectomy."

♪ ♪

And I sent him a picture of the pregnancy test,

and I said, "Well, it didn't work."

And he started leaving voice messages,

which were insane.

♪ ♪

NEIL: You need to get yourself to a doctor

and have a proper pregnancy test,

not a piss-on-a-stick one.

But I have zero sperm.

Don't sit there putting things on me that this could be mine,

because it isn't-- medically impossible.

TINA: It wasn't like he was like,

"Oh, go and have an abortion."

He just didn't want to be blamed.

NEIL: You can keep the baby.

Great for you.

But it ain't mine, darling.

It seriously, seriously isn't mine.

♪ ♪

TINA: He was just rude.

NEIL: I will have nothing to do with you,

nothing to do with your child.

♪ ♪

- I didn't expect him to be angry with me.

- This man, who all his life thought he couldn't ever

have children, why isn't he happy?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- It got really weird.

♪ ♪

So I just said, "You're more than welcome

to take a DNA test when the baby's born."

♪ ♪

ANDREA: Neil refuses to do the DNA test,

but Tina didn't need it.

She knew he was the father.

She hadn't been with anybody else.

She just couldn't understand

why he was adamantly denying it.

♪ ♪

But she moved on without Neil,

and in January of 2017, Tina welcomed her baby girl,

Josephine, and she calls her Fifi.

TINA: When my daughter was born,

she very quickly went blue.

[solemn music]

She had a lung infection.

She was put into an incubator.

She also had really serious jaundice.

♪ ♪

The treatment for the jaundice,

the light treatment, wasn't working,

and they said, "There's only one more level

"we can go up before we have to give her

"a blood transfusion.

"Then we're gonna need blood types of the parents,

any medical history."

ANDREA: Tina was afraid for her baby's life.

She hadn't spoken to Neil in months,

but she had kept in touch with one of his friends,

and she reached out to him

to express the urgency of the situation.

- I suddenly get these long, nasty texts.

[ominous music]

How dare I contact his friend?

Even if he did share DNA with my child,

he would never want

anything to do with someone as vile as me

and that he would not be giving any medical history.

♪ ♪

Just ugly messages to someone

who had just given birth to his daughter,

who was potentially about to have a blood transfusion.

♪ ♪

Any person would make that phone call to help any baby.

Most people would do more than that to help a kitten.

- This [bleep] is not helping.

Why?

[tense music]

TINA: Luckily, she didn't need the blood transfusion.

The next level of lights did work.

After a week in hospital, we were able to go home.

[soft music]

♪ ♪

ANDREA: Tina and the baby are settling in nicely at home,

but she can't let go of how Neil conducted himself,

so she decides to take action against him.

TINA: I thought, I'm gonna set the Child Maintenance Service

onto you for the next 18 years.

Not because I want the money, but because you deserve it.

Because you're not a nice person.

ANDREA: Tina submitted an application

to the Child Maintenance Service,

which is the UK's agency for child support.

- Boy, did it open up a box of worms.

♪ ♪

TINA: When the report came through,

it said that it had been accepted,

and that he had been assessed 5 pounds a week

because he was a benefits recipient,

which was the first, like, what?

Like, I know this guy has a business.

But then the next really alarming thing

was that that 5 pounds a week

was split between four children.

[dramatic music]

ANDREA: There were no names or details in the CMS report,

so Tina decides to do her own investigation.

TINA: The first thing I did was go to Facebook,

and I look up Neil's last name, Lawman.

Straight away, up comes a profile.

I thought, well, this must be his ex-wife.

Or his current wife. Who knows?

Not in America, right here, not far from where I now live.

And on the profile was a picture of two young girls.

♪ ♪

And they look like Fifi.

♪ ♪

I thought, shall I write to her?

So I did.

♪ ♪

I said, "I just had a baby,

and the father is Neil Lawman."

And quite quickly, she got back to me.

The first line was just, "I am so sorry

that you have also been his victim."

I'm like, oh, [bleep].

♪ ♪

[tense music]

- Tina reaches out to a woman on Facebook

that has the same last name as Neil, which is Lawman.

♪ ♪

TINA: She wrote back, "Every word

out of that man's mouth is a lie."

And he'd gone and left her with nothing but a mess

and his two children to raise.

And she was clearly traumatized.

♪ ♪

- I used to be married to Neil.

[solemn music]

♪ ♪

I chose to do this interview anonymously

because I have two girls with Neil who are now grown up,

and they don't want this to come back and haunt them.

[dramatic music]

I would like Neil to suffer slowly, tortuously,

and I'd like to witness it.

♪ ♪

Neil and I got married on August the 25th, 2002.

[bell tolling]

[soft music]

We were together until November 2009 when he left.

ANDREA: Neil's ex-wife,

who doesn't want us to use her name,

tells Tina that they've never lived in the United States.

She did not leave Neil for his friend.

He's definitely the father of her two kids.

And he has never once mentioned having cancer.

TINA: At this point, I realized that

he had impregnated me maliciously.

He knew what he was doing.

NEIL'S EX-WIFE: I didn't really want

to do this interview,

but I can't bear the thought of him

having any more children with some other unsuspecting victim.

This is Neil's story to me,

so it may have some degree of untruth.

[tense music]

His mother had him when she was 16.

She told him that his father was Kevin Jones,

who she was then with.

♪ ♪

They sat Neil down on his 18th birthday and told him that

Kevin Jones was not his father,

and he had believed all that time that he was his father.

♪ ♪

Six months later, Kevin Jones died of a heart attack,

and Neil doesn't know who his father is.

But I can imagine that finding something out like that

when you're 18 probably could have contributed to

his dysfunctional personality.

ANDREA: His ex-wife also shared

that Neil used to go by Neil Jones,

but he changed his last name to his mother's maiden name,

which is Lawman.

NEIL'S EX-WIFE: Neil was very charming

and very good at making people feel comfortable.

♪ ♪

He appeared to be ambitious.

He appeared to be a hard worker,

but he was very deceiving in all of those things.

♪ ♪

Never spent any time with the kids,

and he was having affairs.

ANDREA: Even though things were getting really bad,

Neil's ex-wife tried to stick it out for the kids,

but Neil left.

♪ ♪

- He left his ex-wife for another relationship.

♪ ♪

NEIL'S EX-WIFE: So he left in November 2009.

The last time my daughters saw him was March 2010,

and they have not seen him since then.

♪ ♪

- Tina and Neil's ex-wife, they start a connection.

They start talking on the phone and texting all the time.

So they decide to meet up in London.

TINA: We instantly got along.

[light music]

I remember her saying to me, all these years,

I've felt like the stupidest woman in the world.

And then I meet you, and you're, like,

the smartest woman I've ever met,

and you were duped.

And I felt exactly the same way about her.

There was a vindication.

- I told Tina everything about my relationship with Neil.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

TINA: They lived very lavishly.

She thought that he was doing well in business.

But actually, she found out that he remortgaged their house

without her knowing.

♪ ♪

NEIL'S EX-WIFE: He also had 40,000 pounds

worth of business debts,

which had a claim over the house,

and I didn't know anything about any of it.

So I had to put the house on the market,

sell it to pay off his debt, and then start again.

♪ ♪

- Neil's ex and Tina chatted for hours,

and then she dropped a bombshell.

- I said to Tina, "I hate to tell you this,

but Neil had two other sons."

[dramatic music]

ANDREA: After Neil left, his ex-wife finds out,

through Child Maintenance Services,

that he had two sons that he had had

before they had ever met,

and he had never once mentioned them to her.

♪ ♪

- Why would you wanna have kids

if you didn't want to have kids?

♪ ♪

- Before calling it a night, Tina had an idea.

- I thought it would be funny to send him a little memento.

We took a picture and were giving him the bird,

and we entitled it, "The other mother."

He didn't take it with humor.

[ominous music]

He sent emails to my work.

He wrote very graphic, awful depictions

of the time that we dated and made it out

to actually be something quite lewd.

♪ ♪

And he sent it to the entire company

I worked for.

If he'd have sent naked pictures of me,

it wouldn't have been less humiliating.

♪ ♪

- Tina was not about to be bullied by Neil,

so she reports the email to the police,

and they put out a warrant for his arrest

for malicious communication.

TINA: The police told me he also had

another warrant out for his arrest

at the same time for fraud.

I learned that he was arrested 11 times

and convicted 5.

But Neil's never served

more than a couple of days in prison.

He always gets suspended sentences.

ANDREA: And so Tina was hoping that,

with this malicious communications charge,

it would finally land him behind bars.

TINA: The police said they couldn't find him,

so the warrant got canceled after a year,

and they didn't even let me know.

♪ ♪

NEIL'S EX-WIFE: The man is still walking the streets,

and he is still capable of impregnating women

and then walking away with total abandon.

So Tina had this idea to set up a Facebook page

to warn people about Neil.

♪ ♪

TINA: The Neil Lawman victims support group.

We just hoped that people would type his name

into Facebook before dating him

or before going into business with him,

and it'll give them a little red flag.

ANDREA: Neil tried to get the Facebook page taken down,

but Tina fought to keep it up, and she won.

♪ ♪

TINA: In the Facebook group,

there are people who claim

they have had business relationships with him

that went very sour,

women that he has dated who claim he's turned on them,

family members of people that he's hurt

who claim he's caused problems within the families.

There's quite a few landlords who claim he doesn't pay rent.

And what I wasn't expecting was other mothers.

♪ ♪

[soft music]

- How did we all meet? [laughs]

- Where do you start? [laughter]

- Well, it's the first time I've actually met

Adelle and Claire in person.

- We arranged for Tina to meet with three members

of the Neil Lawman victims support group.

Right now, there are more than 150 members.

- And of course, Karen.

Yeah.

- Karen came to the group through Neil's ex-wife,

and she says she was one of his first victims

over 30 years ago.

- So obviously, you know, back 30-odd years ago.

Neil was quite young.

KAREN: Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't like,

obviously what he is now, he was just--

TINA: What was he like?

- Just normal dude.

He was just a normal guy.

TINA: The thing is, his ruse is normality.

He just pretends to be a normal bloke,

and that's how he gets you.

♪ ♪

KAREN: When I met Neil, I was 24.

Neil was 20.

He was my neighbor.

[soft music]

In the beginning, he was very charming.

It was like he was looking after me all the time.

- In this relationship, there was no mention

of infertility or cancer.

And nine months into their relationship,

they get engaged, and Karen was pregnant.

♪ ♪

KAREN: When I told him I was pregnant, he was happy.

He done the nursery up with me.

And there was no problem.

And when my son was born, he was really hands-on.

♪ ♪

- It's kind of strange how Neil goes from this loving father

when his son is born in 1994

to never mentioning him once

to anyone he dates for the next 31 years.

[unsettling music]

- My name is Daniel, and I'm Neil's son.

♪ ♪

I don't really remember much, to be honest.

I think I try and block most of it out.

I don't really ask many questions about him.

It's not gonna change anything for me,

so the less I know, the better I feel.

ANDREA: It's in this relationship

where we see a pattern form.

Neil starts off as a great guy,

but then he morphs into a completely different person,

becomes controlling and just plain mean.

KAREN: He didn't like to be wrong or be told no.

And if I ever challenged him, Neil would say

that I was really fat and ugly.

And if you leave me, you'll be on your own.

You're gonna become a single mum.

He'd go from, like, nothing to mad.

He just chipped away at me.

♪ ♪

- Multiple women on Facebook allege that Neil was

violent with them, including Karen.

KAREN: At the time, I did love him.

But I was nervous of him,

and I didn't wanna make him angry, 'cause I got a smack.

♪ ♪

I kept thinking, it's gonna be all right.

He didn't mean to do it.

He was really sorry.

He said, "I'll never do it again.

I'll get help."

♪ ♪

- A lot of what I'm hearing today is obviously

the first time I'm hearing these--these things.

And the more I hear is-- it's just shocking.

It's nothing less than a scumbag.

ANDREA: In responding to a protective order

sought against him,

Neil denies physical abuse allegations,

and he was never convicted of any violent crimes.

But according to Karen,

Neil promised that he would change,

but things didn't get better.

So Karen left Neil when Daniel was just 20 months old.

KAREN: He was seeing him on weekend visits,

but there was loads of times

where he'd let him down and not turn up,

and there was always an excuse.

I was obviously upset.

He's not gonna come back.

He's not gonna suddenly become my father again.

And getting to where I want to go to

in my personal journey.

- Does Neil have a relationship with his son?

KAREN: No.

He did until he was about six.

[tense music]

DANIEL: The last time I seen him was sitting in McDonald's,

and there was, like, sea monkeys.

He gave me those and basically said that

he couldn't see me no more.

- And then he just literally disappeared, went, gone.

ANDREA: That was in 2000,

the same year Neil met his ex-wife,

who didn't even find out about Daniel until after he left,

and she read the Child Maintenance Service report.

There was another son that was listed on the CMS report.

It was a son that he had when he was 18,

and he ran off as soon as he was born.

And Tina tracked down that mother on Facebook.

[mysterious music]

TINA: She's very, very direct.

She said, "Just forget about him.

Put it behind you. Don't think about him."

And she said the day someone calls her

to let her know that he's dropped dead

will be the day she pops open a bottle of champagne.

ANDREA: Through this Facebook group,

another shocking detail comes to light

28 years after it happened.

- Two of his kids were born eight weeks apart.

ANDREA: Those two boys were born to mothers

who lived on the same street.

One of the moms was Karen.

- He also had a girlfriend down the road.

And I said, he's 28 in August.

And she said, "I think you should hear it from me.

There's another child, and he was 28 in June."

I was like, "Oh. Oh, OK."

I'm just waiting for who else there is.

- I call myself the one who got away.

[tense music]

- How did it feel to you when you found out

there was another woman who had a baby at the same time?

- To be honest, because I've been speaking to you guys,

I wasn't actually really shocked.

Just made Daniel a bit further down in the pecking order.

[laughter]

TINA: She lived on the same street.

- Literally the same street. I didn't know that, obviously.

- How did they keep you separated and not cross paths?

- We had to move quickly.

CLAIRE: You have to think to yourself,

how has he managed to do this to people and keep doing it?

- Get away with it.

- It just gets more and more insane.

♪ ♪

I kind of struck up a relationship with Neil

through a Facebook business group in 2015.

I was going through a divorce, and I had two young boys.

I wasn't looking for a relationship

or anything like that, but there was this

underlying charisma that kind of came across

once you started speaking to him.

That's when he reeled you in.

[indistinct chatter]

The first time I heard about the infertility,

we'd been out for drinks.

♪ ♪

And the next morning,

I woke to find him in my bed.

♪ ♪

We hadn't been intimate prior to this.

I remember saying to him, "Oh, my God,

did--did we have sex last night?"

And he was like, "Don't you remember?"

And he made it all jokey and, like, made me feel

a bit stupid for not remembering.

And I said, did we use something?

Obviously, I didn't want to have any more children.

And he said to me, "Listen, don't worry, don't worry.

I can't have children anyway."

[dramatic music]

"I've had testicular cancer.

"I had to go through chemotherapy.

I have no more sperm cells."

I was ashamed.

I needed to close that chapter.

♪ ♪

ANDREA: Neil tried to see Claire again.

Even though she never became pregnant by him,

she cut him off.

- He targets divorced women with children and with careers.

And you know, he's-- he's definitely followed

a--a pattern.

He goes for successful, secure women

and then tries to drag them down.

♪ ♪

When I reached out to his most recent girlfriend,

she was really under his control.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- I'm Rachel.

I met Neil Lawman through my business

I had at the time.

Neil came across very like a successful businessman

and caring person.

In the beginning of the relationship,

he was really good around my kids,

and my kids really liked him.

ANDREA: Neil did tell Rachel

about his two daughters with his ex-wife,

but there was no mention of any other children.

And in the 2 1/2 years that they are together,

there was no mention of infertility,

no mention of cancer.

But he had other stories to tell.

RACHEL: He told me about all the property that he owns

and how he used to work for the government

and how he used to be an ex-pro ice hockey player.

Everything he told me was a lie.

But he says it in such a way, it's very believable,

so I never really questioned it.

ANDREA: Rachel and her kids moved in with Neil.

At first, they stayed in his two-bedroom apartment,

but then Rachel bought her own house,

and Neil came with her.

And according to her, he slowly started to change.

RACHEL: It was mentally controlling.

It's weird.

He had that thing about you where he would

pick you up and lift you up.

You'd think, great, I feel amazing.

But then he'd really drop you down

and just kind of pick on the things you don't like.

[ominous music]

The way I dress, the way I look.

And then by the end, he was distant from everyone.

He didn't really show any emotion or care

or interest in me or my kids.

ANDREA: Rachel's family is concerned about Neil.

And Rachel has an aunt that decides to do

her own investigation

and finds this Facebook page

and shows Rachel.

And Rachel is horrified by what she sees,

and it motivates her to leave Neil.

She sends him an email saying that she's left,

and then he starts bombarding her with voice messages.

NEIL: Rachel, I've just got your email,

and I'm absolutely gutted.

I want to be with you.

I love you.

Please answer my call, Rachel.

Please, please come home.

RACHEL: At the beginning, it was very desperate.

And then it kind of turned nasty.

NEIL: You snuck off, and I'm walking

around the house, thinking, well, all this is mine.

All this is mine.

I have got nowhere to go,

and I am not leaving this house.

[dramatic music]

RACHEL: I just ignored it.

There's no way to get me back now.

Not a chance in hell.

ANDREA: Rachel's lucky that she was able to completely

cut Neil out of her life.

So many women are still connected to Neil

through their children.

And how many children Neil has is hard to confirm.

- When it comes to kids that there's either a DNA test

or he's on their birth certificate, there's five.

Some people have reached out and said

that they have his child.

I think there's 13 alleged children.

♪ ♪

- Tina got one of the UK's largest newspapers,

The Times, to cover the story.

♪ ♪

- My name is Ben Ellery, and I am the crime editor

for The Times.

Every person we spoke to opened another doorway

into this world of Neil Lawman.

Each one took us further

and was slightly more unbelievable.

♪ ♪

We got to a stage where if we wanted to run the story,

we needed to gather some hard evidence.

TINA: We did a DNA test between my daughter

and his ex-wife's two daughters.

Neil's on their birth certificate.

The markers came through on their DNA test

more than most full siblings have.

It's ironclad.

♪ ♪

BEN: I know Tina is campaigning for

lying to someone about being infertile

to be made a criminal offense.

TINA: There is absolutely justice

that needs to be served against Neil.

♪ ♪

I want him to be convicted of rape by deception.

♪ ♪

[tense music]

- Neil had gone to such lengths with his lies

to impregnate me with a child

he had no intentions of being part of.

♪ ♪

At one point, there was a police officer

who did take a great interest

and start investigating Neil's actions.

She said it really did fit with rape by deception.

ANDREA: Rape by deception falls outside

the typical definition of rape.

It's an argument that says a perpetrator deceives someone

in order to get consent.

- I didn't consent to be with a fertile man.

ANDREA: There's another high-profile case in the UK

where a man lied about having a vasectomy

and got a woman pregnant,

and the rape-by-deception argument was used,

and he was found guilty.

But ultimately, he was able to have that verdict overturned.

- It was overturned because rape by deception

has to be connected to the sex act itself,

not the circumstances around the act.

ANDREA: Now it's precedent.

So Tina's investigation was dropped.

- You can't seem to pin him down

and prosecute him for anything.

- The rape by deception, malicious communication,

fraud, all been swept under the rug.

But I'd love to see change happening.

But what we have managed to do is,

if not stop him, slow him down.

ANDREA: These women aren't expecting Neil

to make any admissions anytime soon.

They're just left wondering why Neil is the way he is.

CLAIRE: Do you think it's a control thing?

- I do think so. - Because he goes for women

that are freshly divorced.

So there's that vulnerability about them

even though they are strong, independent women.

- He finds their vulnerability. CLAIRE: Yeah.

And that's where he gets in at.

And it's from then he kind of monopolizes everything.

- You can't put it down to trauma or anything for him

because he had a good upbringing.

He's got a good family.

He's got no excuse whatsoever.

- Yeah.

♪ ♪

TINA: I know because of the Facebook group

and after The Times article,

people aren't buying into his fraud so much

and his romantic charms.

So I think his lifestyle has definitely taken a downturn.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- Betrayal's investigative team went to Neil's home

in Jaywick to get his side of the story.

♪ ♪

[knocking]

TINA: I think all the mothers are worried

about nature and nurture.

[solemn music]

But I've met a number of the children,

and they're all beautiful souls.

♪ ♪

NEIL'S EX-WIFE: My girls have really developed

into successful, smart adults in spite of what he did.

♪ ♪

TINA: My daughter is the most empathetic,

kind, sweet little girl.

There's no faulty wiring in her.

[laughs]

JOSEPHINE: That looks like me.

I think it looks just like you, actually.

We've had some conversations about Neil,

and what I've let her know is that she's been lucky

that she's grown up being given a lot of love

and a lot of affection and a lot of attention.

So she's able to go and give it to other people.

And I said, not everyone is filled with that

when they're growing up.

And unfortunately, he's one of those people

that just doesn't have it to give.

She doesn't ever seem particularly fazed by it.

- When Neil's ex-wife told her daughters about Fifi,

they wanted to meet her,

and now they have a relationship.

- They've been in her life since she was three months old.

She absolutely adores them.

She's met Daniel, her half-brother, as well.

And--and I think she just feels quite fulfilled

by having people who genuinely care about her,

so why would she care about someone who doesn't?

[tense music]

I wish for his future that it's exactly what he deserves.

But let's end on a positive note and say that,

doesn't he have amazing taste in women?

KAREN: Oh, absolutely.

[laughter]

TINA: Whether he'll actually face justice or not,

I hope so, but all I can do is tell my story

and hope that someone listens

who has the power to do something about it.

♪ ♪

[blowing, laughing]