Kaitlyn Braun, pregnancy fraudster, 25, who lied about being raped and faked stillbirths, had a ‘fetish’ for tricking healthcare workers, BBC podcast reveals

Pregnancy doulas who were duped by a young woman who concocted a web of lies, including saying she’d been raped and given birth to stillborn babies – have been speaking about how the truth was finally uncovered. 

The story of Kaitlyn Braun, 24, from Brantford, Ontario, in Canada, who repeatedly lied to the birthing partners she hired, claiming she was in labor or carrying a child that had already died inside her, is the subject of a new BBC podcast, Kaitlyn’s Baby.

The six-part series, a collaboration between BBC World Service and Canada’s CBC network, is released on BBC Sounds on January 14th and sees Canadian journalist Sarah Treleaven meeting some of the women who fell under the young woman’s spell – believing she needed their care.

The series looks at Braun’s motives, which have, Treleaven says, puzzled both psychiatrists and legal systems.  

Braun was sentenced in February 2024 to house arrest for harassment and fraudulently seeking the services of numerous doulas in Ontario between June 2022 and February 2023. 

Just this week, she pleaded guilty to two counts of obtaining services by false pretence, two harassment-related charges and breaching a conditional sentencing order – after she struck again last year. 

Episode one reveals how Braun first managed to convince Ontario-based doulas – professionals who provide support during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period – of her fraudulent plights back in late 2022. 

Amy Perry, who’s worked in the profession for eight years and lives in a quiet town just west of Toronto, tells the podcast that she was put in touch with Braun via her friend Katie, who was on a Facebook group up called The Placenta Squad that Perry had set up. 

Katie explains how Braun had contacted her, saying: ‘She told me she didn’t have family or friends to support her, that it was just about as traumatic a scenario as it possibly could be because she had just found out that her baby didn’t have a heartbeat as well.’

With much of the world still online because of the ongoing pandemic, Katie comforted Braun virtually while she believed she was giving birth to her stillborn child, who’d she’d named Eden. 

She explains the young woman was a master of deception, saying: ‘We were working through contractions, they were timed out properly. 

‘When things would get more intense, her cognitive abilities would come and go, which is very normal.’ 

Amy Perry would later take over – as the labour apparently progressed – and continue ‘coaching’ her, with Braun talking to Eden throughout.   

The social worker’s lies continued, as she went to extreme lengths to maintain her pretense, telling doulas she had a bleeding disorder and terminal cancer, and sending two of them a picture of a stillborn baby at the end of her treatment.

Some of the doulas supported Kaitlyn in person at her home in Brantford. After further fake labours and claims of stillbirths, a doula named Terri tells the podcast she felt compelled to ask Braun, who lived with her mother, directly what was going on. 

In episode three, Terri explains that after confronting the pregnancy fraudster, Braun dissolved into tears, saying ‘I don’t know why I do it’. Terri tells the programme that she thinks Braun has a ‘fetish, she’s manipulating’. 

Despite portraying herself as a victim of sexual assault, Braun herself had a sexualised motive for some of her behaviour. 

During her initial trial in February 2022, Braun was accused of coercing 19 victims into giving her massages while she was physically naked with the ‘intent to insult or offend them’.

Speaking on the podcast The Doula Scam REAL last year, one of the doulas, Chelsea, who did not charge Kaitlyn for her services, claimed the con artist told her she had miscarried a baby and was waiting to give birth naturally.

Chelsea said she gave Kaitlyn continuous emotional support and sent her numerous PDF documents that could help her through the labour and after support. 

When Kaitlyn ‘went into labour’ she was messaging Chelsea, claiming she was in the hospital and that she had the stillbirth.

However she claimed that she still had to urge to push, which worried Chelsea at the time and she told her to call her nurses back in. 

Kaitlyn claimed she had to have a dilation and curettage (D&C), which is a surgical procedure that can be performed after childbirth to remove any remaining placental tissue from the uterus. 

Chelsea said: ‘She went for a D&C and afterwards she tells me that everything was ok, there was a lot of bleeding but everything was ok.

‘But then all of a sudden she was feeling like she needed to push again, and I was like hold on, what’s going on, she just had a D&C. 

‘I say “call your nurse, ask them I don’t really know at this point, I’m not there I don’t really know this whole situation”. 

‘She told me that her doctor checked her and then she says ”Chelsea, it’s twins, there another baby coming”, my response was ”what?” and that was the last thing that I messaged her because after that I decided to cut contact because the chances of that happening are so slim after having ultrasounds and everything.

‘On top of that she just had a D&C there would not be anything left, it was so wild and out there that I was sure it wasn’t true.

‘She then tried to back track and say ”oh never mind, it is just a piece of placenta”, but I was done at that point and I wasn’t going to be responding to anymore messages.’

Meanwhile Sienna, who had just trained as a doula, was approached by Kaitlyn in another scam. 

Sienna, who lived a 90 minute car journey away from Kaitlyn, went to be by her side as she “gave birth”. 

Doulas are trained to help pregnant woman through contractions and comfort them in anyway they can.

Posting her story on social media, Sienna explained: ‘At one point her mom came home from work, her mother didn’t say anything to me, about it being fake or having mental health challenges.

‘She didn’t say anything to me, she did give me the impression that she didn’t want me there, she kept asking if I was going to go home. Now I know why, at the time I just thought she was the one who wanted to be there for her daughter.

‘Every time her mother walked in the room the contractions would stop. But everytime we feel unsafe in labour it will stall… so that wasn’t a total red flag.’ 

Kaitlyn would pretend to have phone calls with doctors after Sienna urged her to go to the hospital.   

Eventually Sienna drove her to hospital and forced her to go inside after she initially refused to go.

Inside the hospital, she continued to fake her contractions after several hours. Kaitlyn then claimed she had an appointment the next day with a nurse practitioner, before returning to the hospital.

During her appointment, nurses bizarrely managed to find a heart rate for the baby – it is unclear why – but when they performed an ultrasound they told Kaitlyn she was not pregnant.

She then told her doula ‘I’m so confused’, and declined any psychiatric help from the hospital, despite having scans in Hamilton three weeks earlier which showed she was not pregnant.    

‘These events have caused immeasurable pain and impacted the functioning of doulas and their businesses, not only in Brantford, but across Ontario and throughout Canada and the U.S.’

In February 2024, a judge sentenced Braun to two years of house arrest and three years of probation after she pleaded guilty late in 2023 to 21 of the 52 charges she faced, including fraud, indecent acts, false pretences and mischief. 

She also was told she’d have to wear a GPS ankle bracelet and undergo mandatory counselling, was forbidden to contact victims, and banned from using the internet and social media for two years. 

Earlier this week, Braun was back in the dock at the Ontario Court of Justice in Hamilton accused of obtaining by services by false pretence, harassment-related charges and her conditional sentencing order breach. 

All six episodes of Kaitlyn’s Baby are available on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 14th January 2025, visit bbc.co.uk/sounds