Vault Release: CHRIS BATHUM Part 4 of 5: The Sleeping Bear

0:00You may have heard of the sex cult NXIVM and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack. But she's never told her side of the story, until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed, and in my new podcast, I talk to Alison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member, and what she thinks of it all now. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma to other people? I mean, I don't even know how to answer that question. Alison, after NXIVM from CBC's Uncover, is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:33This episode contains disturbing content, including mention of sexual assault, illicit drug use, and explicit language. Please take care while listening. In February of 2015, Rose discovered that Chris Batham was using crystal meth. The revered leader of a thriving recovery community, Rose's therapist and boss, was actively doing drugs. She knew if the rumors surrounding his drug use were true, other rumors could also be true. Him using was crazy, but the reason, again, that I had a hard time, like, believing that he was having sex with clients or abusing them was because it was followed with and he's doing drugs with them.

1:19And that was, like, unbelievable. Until now, Chris had been able to convince Rose that she was wrong to be suspicious of him. that none of the rumors were true. But when she saw the meth in his Tesla, it was like she snapped out of a trance. Rose realized Chris had been lying to her. It was gaslighting to me. It felt that way. It felt fucked up and twisted, and it fucked with my head. Rose had taken photos and videos of the meth she found in Chris's Tesla. She showed this evidence to CRLA directors Josh Lazy and Rafi Oknayan. Then, on February 23rd, 2015, just over a week after Rose's meth discovery, Lazy and Rafi told Rose they had a plan.

2:07And so they were like, we're getting him out of the fucking company. Like, he can't, you know, or he needs to go get treatment. Lazy and Rafi informed Rose they had confronted Chris Batham at his house and performed an intervention. He responded really well and was like, okay, you know, admitted everything, wasn't lying. When you say admitted everything, what did he admit? Like that he had been doing drugs and slept with some clients? Right, yeah. So basically, it's all taken care of. He's not ever coming back. And we just, you know, hope he gets help. Perhaps realizing that the crystal meth was damning evidence, Chris admitted he had been using drugs and he had also slept with several clients.

2:51In that same intervention, he agreed to step away from CRLA. Rose was told Chris was going to go into treatment for drug use. But the official CRLA story was that he was on vacation for an undisclosed amount of time. So later that night, Bathroom writes this long kind of like legal document or whatever that he's leaving and he's giving the company to Kirsten and to Lazy and Rafi. Chris would step away from the company and seek help. But was this true? When I spoke with Jill, she indicated this was something of a pattern. Oh yeah, when he went to rehab and no one was supposed to know, that was a joke.

3:33Apparently they had put him through detox many times. Apparently only the top people knew. But I didn't know. Rose noticed that no one was discussing what to do about the sexual abuse. him doing drugs was awful but that wasn't like the horrible thing it was the sexual relationship it was just the levels of just like holy shit because i know batham had his way of being cool but i just i was looking around i was like i don't see any of these women just dying to climb into bed with chris batham rose's strict moral code made her see the situation very clearly chris Bathom had broken the law and abused clients.

4:18In her eyes, his actions needed to be investigated by law enforcement. She started to wonder, was anyone going to hold him accountable, or would they all just look the other way? From Cast Media, this is The Opportunist. This is season four, episode four, Chris Bathom, The Sleeping Bear. I'm Hannah Smith.

4:56When Chris Batham left CRLA to supposedly seek treatment, he handed the company over to CRLA's top directors. Kirsten Wallace became the new CEO, and just underneath her were Josh Lazy and Rafi Oknayan. Rose had worked closely with all three of them, Neither Lazy nor Rafi agreed to speak with us for the story, and we were unable to track down Kirsten Wallace. So the following events are according to Rose. Rose was devastated about what Chris had done, so she thought it was odd when her new bosses seemed to move on really quickly. She said Lazy and Rafi were excited during this time, almost jubilant.

5:38They went from being like, oh my God, this is fucking horrible, to kind of excited, like, oh my God, we've just inherited this company. They're like excited, they're happy. And it is off-putting to me a little bit, or at least lazy seemed happy to me. I mean, you know, as happy as you can be, but it was like the turn of events was like, now he has this company. Then, shortly after Chris agreed to step down, the new leadership started to speak about him in a different light. They start, like, talking kind of, like, lovingly about Baphim. I was like, you know, and I was really, like, caught off guard by that.

6:16Lazy and Rafi started to talk about Chris sympathetically, saying he was just an addict who needed treatment. Rose kept thinking, but what about the sexual misconduct? What about the rumors that he had given clients access to drugs, clients like Mo? So then she realized something terrible. I'm at M2 one day and this client comes over and she's like, where's Batham? Where's Batham? And I was like, oh, no, you know, he's still on vacation. And she was like, no, he's not. He's here. And I was like, no, he's not here. I promise you. And she showed me her phone and he was texting. He texted her saying, like, get back to work, like, put that coffee down and get back to work.

7:03Chris had not actually gone away. He was logged in remotely to the cameras at CRLA. He was watching female clients and client staff and texting them. And he goes, oh yeah, no, he's texting all of us. He's just like fucking with us, but we thought he was here. I mean, that was just fucking horrible to me. I was like, oh my God, oh my God. Even after the intervention, Chris would not stop interacting with female clients. Rose was incensed. she brought this news to Josh Lazy, the man who had been promoted by Batham's departure. And I walk in there and I was like, dude, what are we going to do? What are you going to do?

7:40Like, you got to tell him. And I had every expectation that the conversation would be, oh my God, what an asshole. This is what I'm going to do. And that was like the major turning point for me because his response was like, what the fuck do you want me to do? That's what Lazy said to you? Yeah. And I was like, well, what are you talking about? And he was like, he owns the fucking company, Rose. Like, what am I going to do? I can't fucking stop him. And like, you need to chill the fuck out. He's not here in person. Rose pointed out what she felt was the real issue at play. But what about the victims?

8:16And he goes, what fucking victims? And I was like, the girls that he's had sex with. And he goes, oh yeah, supposedly he's been fucking Jonathan Braun too. Is Jonathan Braun another one of his victims? Like, real sarcastically. And I was just like, oh my god. We actually have tape of Chris Batham speaking about this period of time in early 2015 when he stepped away from CRLA. Evan Wright interviewed Chris Batham for his book Bad Therapist. And this is part of a recorded phone conversation he had with Chris. I thought I was going to be able to let it go, walk away from it, and hopefully it was going to do a good thing.

9:00That was my intention. I was trying to get away from it. I had resigned. I had taken on less and less responsibility. I had given up all power in the company in the summer before that, too. So I was trying to get away from it and let go of it and move on. Chris makes it sound like he completely walked away. But that's not what Rose told me. Rose's bosses, Kirsten Wallace, Josh Lazy, Rafi Oknayan, were all still in regular communication with Chris Bathum. It seems Chris was working his way back into CRLA. Rose knew it was only a matter of time before he would return, claiming to be a changed man and potentially keep abusing clients.

9:46Rose didn't know how much time she had before he officially came back. What she did know is that no one around her was doing anything to actually stop Chris Batham. She would have to do it herself. I was really concerned with not getting evidence. And I was really concerned if Batham finds out before I get evidence, I'll never get evidence, you know, because he's going to shut it down, kick me out, do whatever to me. Rose started researching what her options were, what legal action she could take. One thing she discovered was that Chris Batham was not actually a licensed therapist. Just as others like Cliff Brodsky and Rebecca Arvizu had discovered, Rose encountered the problem of just how to report Chris Batham and to whom.

10:31The problem is, this is like the catch-22. If you're acting without a license, then who gets you for that? Because the health department handles licensing and they handle punishments for licensing. So when you practice without a license, they have no authority over you because you don't have a license with them. So they can't even really, like, stop you from practice. It's really bizarre catch-22. Rose needed proof that Chris was breaking the law. And very soon, that proof would fall into her lap. On the night of February 24th, 2015, Rose was told that a client staff named Louis had relapsed and left CRLA.

11:11The problem was he had a company laptop in his possession, and Kirsten Wallace, the new CEO, was worried he might sell it to Cliff Brodsky. There were internal CRLA documents on the computer that she didn't want Brodsky to have. Rose was asked to go find Lewis and get the laptop back. They're having me, like, chasing him all over town. I guess, like, Lazy had tried to go get the computer from him, and he wouldn't give it to him. And so I got tasked with, like, trying to hunt him down. And so I finally, I go and he trusts me and I find him. And I'm like, he's like, it's in a pawn shop. And I was like, OK, like, let's get this computer.

11:49When Rose met up with Lewis, she was surprised by how scared he was. He said he was in danger. And he is terrified. He's terrified. He's like, you cannot fucking tell Kirsten, Lazy Raffi, anywhere where I am. And I was, this is not what I expected when I found him. and he's just like, Rose, the fraud is unreal. Like, you need to fucking be scared because this is going to be something that they want to protect. Lewis told Rose the computer contained evidence that CRLA was involved in insurance fraud. This conversation jogged Rose's memory. She remembered a few months back, a friend of hers warned Rose that CRLA was growing too quickly.

12:34It was suspicious. And so my friend, she was getting her CPA. And so she was like, Rose, like, she had told me before. She was like, the growth of this company is alarming. It's a little suspect. She's like, this company is going to implode if that's the truth. And like, these people are going to be fucked. Even though Chris was apparently on leave, it was clear he was directly involved. Louis showed Rose text messages that Chris was sending him. This was when I really saw Batham's bad side, He started threatening Lewis in these texts. Rose saved those texts and sent them to me. They are undeniably menacing and at times very strange.

13:15Here's an example. You woke up a sleeping bear and now have one chance more before you will see what happens. Trust me on this. Things can always get worse. I kind of hope you do try. Rose wasn't exactly sure what files were on the computer. But Chris's threatening texts to Lewis made her think it had to be something incriminating. Chris was bombarding Lewis with texts, his tone growing more and more aggressive. Here's another one. Rock and roll, Lewis. You tell us everything you stole and we'll back off. But that is it. And one lie and you a Twin Towers kind of guy. Rose wasn't sure who to turn to.

13:57She was well beyond trusting the people in charge at CRLA, especially with the files on that computer. At this point, I had no reason other than to believe that they would destroy them. And not only that, I felt kind of scared for, like, my personal safety, for the client's personal safety, because the fucking thing about Cliff Brodsky was, like, starting to suddenly actually be maybe true. or, you know, that maybe he really had hired someone to do that. To kill Cliff Brodsky? Yeah, yeah, yeah, to cause him to have a car wreck. Chris Batham was proving more dangerous than Rose imagined. Lewis told her that a SWAT team had showed up at his house, terrifying him.

14:40It was an intimidation tactic orchestrated by Chris. He actually fake called the police on him, you know, had like a SWAT show up at his house. It was just like, who is this man? and the things that he's saying to a client of ours. Yeah, that was why I was like, I have absolutely no doubt that he will murder someone. Lewis handed over the laptop to Rose, but he told her he had copied the contents onto a hard drive that was in another location. Rose wondered if the contents of this computer would be the evidence she had been looking for, if it would be enough to report Chris Bathum. She formulated a plan.

15:22She would return the laptop to CRLA and pretend that everything was fine. Meanwhile, Lewis would email her the files from the computer. I had to get his computer to CRLA without them knowing. I had to try to protect it in a way that made it look like nobody had taken the information from it. And I'm like secretly trying to put him into a sober living and get him like talking to some sort of authorities. Rose returned the computer to CRLA on February 25th. A few days later, she received the files from Lewis, and she looked for someone who she could report Chris Batham to. So I was like, I need to call, like, somebody.

16:06Ironically, I get Deb Herzog's phone number from the copies of, like, the Cliff stuff. The Cliff Brodsky stuff, right? Remember, before Rose found the meth, Chris had tasked her with monitoring and investigating Cliff Brodsky. Rose still had screenshots of Cliff's posts from Facebook. And in one of those screenshots was the contact information for an insurance investigator. And so in one of his screenshots, he had been like, contact senior investigator Deb Herzog and gave her contact. And so then I called Deb Herzog and she answered. and I was like, uh, this is really weird. But basically we met within an hour.

16:53She was like, I'll meet you at the Starbucks. And so I drove out and we met and I'm like, here's what I have. I don't know if it's anything. And she looks at it and she was like, fuck yeah. Rose had just handed over the evidence that would eventually lead to a criminal investigation.

17:28Thank you.

17:46for Anthem Blue Cross. Unbeknownst to Rose, Herzog had been investigating Chris Batham for a while. She'd noticed that CRLA used a P.O. box address for insurance claims, and she wondered how all of those different therapies had taken place at a P.O. box. Despite her suspicions, Herzog didn't have any concrete proof. She was told by her bosses at Anthem that she needed internal documents from CRLA proving fraud before they could move forward with the case. She'd hit a wall with the investigation. Then Rose Stahl contacted her. They met at a Starbucks, and Rose brought the CRLA documents she'd gotten from Lewis.

18:30Neither Deb Herzog nor anyone at Anthem agreed to speak with us for this podcast. But according to Rose, and according to an interview that Deb Herzog gave for the book Bad Therapist, the evidence that Rose gave her that day in the Starbucks broke the case wide open. As Rose explained everything, Deb grew concerned for Rose's safety. I told her like the whole story up to that point, and so she was really concerned. And this is where it's like, it's not funny, but it's just insane. This was when she was like, listen, I don't know how crazy Baphim is, but this threat about, you know, Brodsky, she was like, I really don't think you should drive home.

19:15Like, I think you need to just stop driving because what if that's a real threat, you know? And I want you to lock your doors and stuff. And I was like, well, I have to go pick up my kid from school. And so she was like, okay, but then I want you to like stop driving for a little while. Just let me, I'm going to handle this. If you can just do those little thanks. And so I was like, okay. Just to clarify, she told you this during your meeting at Starbucks? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. So it was like kind of like the last thing, like we said after we're leaving. And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna drive home.

19:45Deb didn't want Rose to drive home from their meeting, but Rose had to go pick up her kid from school. She figured she'd be fine. She hadn't told anyone at CRLA about her meeting with Deb Herzog. I'm just driving down Laurel Canyon, And I just remember all of a sudden it was like a bomb went off. And I thought my car had exploded because it was so loud and so jolting. And by the time I look up, I'm like facing oncoming traffic. I was just like, what the hell? I still didn't really understand what happened. And I get out and some guy had like rear ended me in a way that like kind of sent me into oncoming traffic.

20:24So did you hit oncoming cars? I hit like the car in front of me and they hit and they hit type of thing, you know. And it was, you know, and of course I was like, oh my God, thinking. Because it was on my mind, of course. I was like, was that, was that it? Like, was that bathroom? Was that, you know, and it's just like, again, the perfect storm. I mean, I don't think that the sky had anything to do with it at all anymore, just because I just never found anything. and I looked, but he was acting strange. He didn't get out of the car. Rose looked into the guy who caused the car accident. Nothing ever linked directly back to Chris Bathom.

21:06Still, it's hard not to speculate whether Chris was behind it, especially since he was threatening Cliff Brodsky's life by causing a car accident. Either way, Chris knew Rose was up to something. On March 9th, just a few days after Rose met with Deb Herzog, Chris Batham sent a fax to Anthem threatening Rose. So Deb Herzog, like a few days after we met and after the car thing happened, received a fax to Anthem and it was titled, Please Give to Rose Stahl. It was from Batham's personal fax number, but it was signed you know who. He does say that they've set aside like a quarter of a million dollars just to deal with me, bury me on litigation.

21:50Like, we're going to fucking take you down. Like, just real weird. What did Deb think about this? She was mortified. I mean, she was like, you're speechless. Included in this fax that Chris sent to Anthem was part of an email from Rose. Months and months before, Rose had sent Chris, her therapist, an email in confidence. She had opened up about some personal insecurities she was experiencing. He took this email, like a therapy email that I sent him, and a copy of it, and it's just me being all self-loathing, like things you say to your therapist, you know? Like, I'm nobody, and I feel so weak, and I'm not worthy of my job, and all this.

22:34And he inserts a copy of it at the bottom of the fax and says, just to let you know, this has been distributed company-wide, and it's just the beginning. Rose didn't tell anyone at CRLA about her meeting with Deb Herzog, but clearly Chris knew about it. On March 23rd, 2015, Rose was officially fired from CRLA. He definitely felt threatened by me speaking up. I think both of us thought that my talking about it would do something right away and swiftly and damnly. And so that was that reaction. And I don't think he felt that fear for very long, But at that moment, he was. And so that was like, even in my termination emails, you know, they were very like, resend what you said, take it back.

23:25Chris Batham, founder and CEO of a drug and alcohol treatment center, had admitted to doing meth and having sex with clients. He had stepped away. But one month later, Rose had been fired and Chris was back as if nothing had happened. Jill, CRLA's top insurance biller, knew that Rose Stahl had left the company, but she wasn't exactly sure why. Jill had actually transferred out of billing a few months back, but she was still working at CRLA, still very close with Chris and Kirsten. But lately, she had become alarmed by their behavior. I had a meltdown about the insurance and it was to the point where I was literally throwing up in the shower in the morning before I'd go to work because I was getting emails 24-7 because Chris and Kirsten were on drugs and my phone never stopped my emails never stopped I'd get yelled at if I didn't answer them like it had turned into this monster but they were giving me so much money It was like, in my head, it was worth it.

24:36Jill told me it wasn't just Chris Bathom using meth. It was also Kirsten Wallace. Chris had supposedly come back from treatment, but really nothing had changed. Did you know that they were on drugs at the time? At that point, right before when all that started happening and I was just sick to my stomach, we all knew they were on drugs. We all knew at that point. I mean, like some of us would like walk by him to like in the hallway and we would see him doing a group and he's just tweaked out of his mind. And we're just like, really? You know, those of us who'd been there for a few years were like, really?

25:15OK. Oh, cool. You're going to go do a trauma group with the girls. Awesome. Because he loved to do the trauma groups with the girls. He always ran the trauma groups. Why is that? Because he know who to pray on. Oh my gosh. I mean, yeah. Yeah, so you know who to pray on. So you know how to pray on them. Wow. Because just like he knew how to talk to me and how to deal with me and how we're saving the world and, you know, saving lives, which we were, but I didn't realize all the lives that were being harmed. Jill claims she had no idea Chris was abusing clients. and that when she found out, she quit CRLA.

26:03But Jill did know that Chris was having sex with clients, and she knew that things were not necessarily above board in the billing department. So how do you reconcile that? Well, I think a lot of people at CRLA probably knew, to varying degrees, that Chris Batham was involved in some kind of criminal activity. But it's also true that he had this uncanny ability to manipulate. that he was very convincing. And remember, CRLA was Jill's only family. Walking away was a big deal. She had so much to lose. But by the summer of 2015, things had become too clear for her to ignore. There was criminal activity happening right under her nose.

26:50A client came to Jill and confided in her. She was an employee there. She came over. I actually called her and I said, Hey, can you come across the street? I want to talk to you. And I asked her and then I asked another girl and yeah, within 20 minutes I was driving home. What did they say to you? I was, that he was inappropriate and was giving, how do I say it right? Unwanted sexual advances. And I'll leave it at that. And actually that's all I took the time to hear before I left. This was July of 2015. I remember just sitting there at my desk in the clinic, looking around, and I grabbed a trash bag.

27:49It was like 1230, like lunchtime. I grabbed everything. I made copies on a zip drive. And so I copied all the documents. I took my laptop. I emptied out my drawers. I swept everything off my desk. threw it all in a big trash bag, looked around, ran it out, put it in the trunk of my car when no one was looking. When I figured out what was going on, I was like, I'm not doing this. When I figured out how wrong it was, like, oh no. But I went home and I called Rose. Rose and Jill had both been part of Chris Batham's insular world, the people who were closest to him. She was like, oh, thank God. She's like, finally, I have someone to talk to.