‘Foretold’ podcast Episode 8: ‘The Fallout’

Faced with the consequences of her decisions, Paulina grows estranged from her family — but meets Gina, a cousin who left the community decades before. And Paulina turns to her ultimate battle: the fight for her children in court.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript below.

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Faith E. Pinho: It was late summer 2018. It had been just weeks since Paulina left the Train Station with her two daughters, and some of the biggest, most defining moments in her life had all happened in rapid succession. She took the kids. She gave the kids back. She lost the kids. She filed for custody. She got them back.

Paulina Stevens: I got out of the culture and everything really hit me.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina was taking Bobby and his family to court. She was spending more and more time with outsiders. And she was living with her mom, who was trying to encourage her to get back on a traditional Romani path.

Paulina Stevens: Because as I was living with my mom, she would continuously be like, “Well, you can’t be in the gadje. You can’t be with the outsiders. And I see that’s what you’re heading into. That’s what you’re doing.”

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina said her mom encouraged her to mend back the life she had just torn to pieces.

Paulina Stevens: ’Cause my mom knew that I was not wanting to be with Gypsy guys or anything. And at the same time, she was already thinking, “Oh, well, maybe you can get married to this person, or maybe you can just get your husband back,” all of this stuff. And I was like, “Ugh. Just leave me alone.”

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina’s ties to the rest of her community were unraveling. Most people didn’t want anything to do with her. And with nothing left to lose, Paulina felt something akin to freedom.

Paulina Stevens: God. I would just feel so free. I remember I would leave my phone at home and then take the kids in the stroller. We had this big double stroller at the time, really cool stroller. OK. And I would walk like a mile to one of these really beautiful parks, and it was just magical.

I remember just going on those walks and thinking, “This is the life that I want.” I had to slowly convince myself every day more and more that this freedom feels so good.

Faith E. Pinho: This new life Paulina had signed up for was maybe a little lonely, but it was hers. And then, about two months after Paulina had left Bobby, there was a death in the family. A cousin. No one saw it coming.

Paulina Stevens: I was really close with her, and it was such a devastating time. My cousin that had died was very young. I think she was maybe my age. She had left a daughter behind. We were all just mourning.

Faith E. Pinho: So even though Paulina was cut off from community events, she was permitted this tragic exception to attend her cousin’s funeral. But what Paulina didn’t know is that someone else was also granted this exception. Another woman who had been cut off from her family for decades.

Gina Merino: It’s the first time that I’ve been to any kind of anything. And, of course, it would be my sister’s funeral who died out of nowhere. My baby sister.

Faith E. Pinho: This woman was Gina Merino. Growing up, Paulina had heard about her cousin Gina only in whispers.

Paulina Stevens: I think other people, maybe my mom or aunts or something, was like, “Oh, that’s Gina, she’s the one who went into the gadje.” That’s how they say it.

Faith E. Pinho: In Paulina’s family, Gina was a cautionary tale of a good Romani woman who had disgraced her family and left. Gina’s reputation had become almost larger than life, the whispers louder than any reality. And Gina knew what people were saying about her.

Gina Merino: “She wants to be American.” “She likes Americans better.” “She’s crap.” “She’s a whore.” “She left us.” Whatever. All the bad things. If you ask the generation after that, I’m just this mystery girl. It’s like, “Oh my God, that’s the girl that left.”

Faith E. Pinho: And now Gina would be confronting the rumors head-on at her sister’s funeral, showing her face after decades of estrangement.

Gina Merino: I was nervous because I was worried about reactions from people. And at the same time, it was like, I’m the oldest and she was the youngest, and I have to do as much as I can to make sure that everything is OK.

Faith E. Pinho: The funeral lasted three days, in which Gina said she barely slept or ate. She was busy running around the funeral home, from the parlor to the kitchen, taking care of her family as a parade of mourners filtered through.

And as Gina was working in the kitchen, one of her cousins walked in. Gina could tell, immediately, this cousin was different.

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Gina Merino: Her hair was down and it was kind of short, like a very long bob. And that intrigued me because it’s kind of a statement. It’s a huge statement.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina had chopped off her hair after leaving.

Gina Merino: Gypsy girls usually have their hair — their hair is long. If you’re a certain age, your hair should not be too short. And I immediately knew then, I was like, “Her hair is short. She’s probably not married.” But I didn’t know that she was married prior. So we talked for five seconds. And I was like, “Are you married?” She’s like, “No, I just came home.”

Faith E. Pinho: “Coming home” was sort of a euphemism, meaning leaving her husband and coming home to live with her mom. Effectively, getting a separation. And here was the notorious Gina, the only other person who might understand how far Paulina was willing to go.

Paulina Stevens: I kind of wanted to talk to her because I was like, “You left.” And I wanted to talk to her and be like, “How was that experience for you?” But I didn’t.

Faith E. Pinho: They couldn’t really talk openly. Not here, in front of the family, at a funeral. But Paulina didn’t have to say anything for Gina to catch her drift.

Gina Merino: I’m like, “Oh, OK, all right. OK, well, hi. Where do you live?” We talked for a couple of minutes. And then that was it.

Faith E. Pinho: In that little moment in the funeral parlor kitchen, there was a connection forged between Paulina and Gina. A lifeline for Paulina as she began to navigate life outside her community. A life that might, perhaps, look like Gina’s.

This is “Foretold.”

When Gina was growing up in Southern California, she said, she always felt out of place around non-Romani people.

Gina Merino: I do remember, though, wondering why we couldn’t hang out with people. That was always a big question for me. Like, why can’t we hang out with them? Why can’t we go to their house? Why can’t I wear shorts at the swimming pool? Why? And I never asked because I knew I would get in trouble. Because I knew because we’re Roma.

Faith E. Pinho: But Gina felt like a misfit even among her own Romani family. Maybe it was because her mother left and got remarried when Gina was just a baby and she had to stay with her father. Maybe because Gina’s father died when she was just 17 years old and she had to move in with her aunt and uncle. Or maybe because Gina never bought into her family’s fortunetelling business as a viable trade. As Gina put it, she’d always dreamed of something else.

Gina Merino: I would be washing dishes and I would be thinking about going to college. I didn’t even know what it meant. I didn’t know what college meant. I knew it was a big school. I liked school. I don’t think any of my cousins — I know none of my cousins were doing that. They were looking at when they were going to get married. They were looking for spouses. I had crushes on some boys, but I wasn’t trying to get married to nobody.

Faith E. Pinho: And then when Gina was 19, she got pregnant by a man who wasn’t Romani. The father was someone she had met at the gym. Gina knew there was no way she could keep living with her family while having this baby. So she planned her escape, little by little, for weeks.

Gina Merino: And then on May 6, 1992, that was the last day. I had $300 in my pocket. And I walked out.

Faith E. Pinho: She severed ties completely.

Gina Merino: So it was like my freedom day. But the psychological trauma I went through after leaving was very painful.

Faith E. Pinho: Gina went to live with the baby’s father. But even though she had a roof over her head, she didn’t feel at home.

Gina Merino: I was psychologically screwed over leaving my culture. I was afraid I was going to see them. I was also going through the pain of not having them, even though they weren’t good for me. It was terrible. Absolutely terrible.

Faith E. Pinho: Gina’s decision to leave haunted her at night.

Gina Merino: This one very reoccurring dream happened days after I left. In my dream I was sitting on a dirt road, looking down at the dirt. And I look up and there’s this old rickety Ford truck, like a 1940s or ’50s truck. And in the back of it is my whole family. And my uncle’s standing up and he’s raised, he has his hand out and he’s like, “Come on.” The more I’m getting closer, the faster the truck is going. Now my uncle is laughing his ass off at me and everybody stands up and starts laughing at me and I can’t get to the truck. And then the truck just goes off.

Faith E. Pinho: Gina said she would wake up in the middle of the night, crying.

Gina Merino: That went on for a really long time. For a couple of years.

Faith E. Pinho: But every year that went by got a little bit easier. Gina went back to school and earned a bachelor’s degree. Things didn’t work out with her child’s father, but she met a sweet man and they got married. She joined a church and found a community in San Jose.

But even as she built the pillars of her reinvented life, Gina didn’t feel like she quite fit in there either. She still felt like a misfit, no longer welcomed by her Romani community but not feeling fully mainstream American either.

Gina Merino: No one understood. Not one person understood what I was feeling, how I could be relieved and sad at the same time. And I had to go through that by myself.

Faith E. Pinho: And so, very, very slowly, over the course of years, Gina started rebuilding a bridge with her immediate family members. After decades apart, her mom even moved into her apartment building. She got back in touch with some of her brothers and sisters. She said she started looking out for her young nieces and nephews, always keeping an eye out for other misfits like her.

Gina Merino: I want to be the beacon for the people who want to leave.

Faith E. Pinho: But the beacon could only be so bright. Gina was never invited to weddings or birthdays. She was still banished from all Romani events. That is, until September 2018 for her youngest sister’s funeral.

And after her brief interaction with Paulina in the funeral parlor kitchen, Gina didn’t think much about her younger cousin until months later, when she stumbled down an Instagram rabbit hole. And from what Gina could see, it was clear that Paulina wasn’t living a traditional Romani life.

Gina Merino: And I’m like, “Her daughters are in ballet class.” That’s not too — there are some Gypsies that take their kids to ballet class, whatever. But I’m like, “No, this is different.”

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina was posting pictures of her kids. She was driving them places herself. Paulina posted selfies with no head covering. And her page was upbeat and optimistic, full of pictures of nature and inspirational captions.

Gina Merino: It’s not normal. It’s not like a normal Gypsy girl. So I hit her up and I’m like, “Hey, this is Gina, and I just want to say I love your page.”

Paulina Stevens: I had wanted her to reach out to me so bad. I might have liked some of her pictures. I wanted her to talk to me. Because I felt like I was going in the same direction as her.

Gina Merino: And she came back a couple of days later and was like, “I am so glad you reached out. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. You inspire me.”

Faith E. Pinho: Gina really had been that beacon all along. She had always liked the idea of helping other girls from her culture. But now here was one wanting her help.

Gina Merino: I was like, “Oh s—.” I was like, “Oh God.” I was like, “Oh God, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble.” I was like, “Did you tell anybody it was because of me?” “No, but you inspired me. I know you did it.”

Faith E. Pinho: Still, Gina kept messaging Paulina, and soon, those messages turned into a phone call.

Paulina Stevens: We talked for hours. Hours and hours. Yeah.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina started pouring her heart out to Gina. She was dying to hear about the life Gina had built for herself.

Paulina Stevens: I think it was inspiring. She talked about her degree. I think she really opened my eyes to a lot of things.

Faith E. Pinho: From where Paulina stood, Gina, despite all the rumors, was doing just fine. Although Paulina knew her case was different from Gina’s. Because Paulina wasn’t just leaving. She was trying to take her children with her.

Gina Merino: She’s like, “I’m going through this horrible custody battle, and every time I go to court, they scare the crap out of me.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? They scare you?” You know, I’m like, “What are you talking about?” She’s like, “All the men are there, and they’ll give me looks.” I went, “Nuh-uh. When are you going next?”

Faith E. Pinho: On the spot, Gina agreed to go to court with her.

Gina Merino: I told her that I was going to always be there for her.

Faith E. Pinho: Because Gina knew how it felt to be alone. She didn’t want that for Paulina, who she calls Nina.

Gina Merino: So I remember crying with her because I know the fear she had. I totally understood it. It was crazy for me by myself. But I could be there for Nina.

Faith E. Pinho: So in January 2020, Gina made good on her promise.

Gina Merino: We went to court.

Faith E. Pinho: And this is where I first met Gina: at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach. The lady with the teal hair and larger-than-life personality from Episode 1.

Gina Merino: Oh! So you filed emergency and they gave it to you.

Paulina Stevens: Yeah.

Gina Merino: That’s why they keep filing emergency. They keep thinking, “Well, she filed, so I can file too.”

Faith E. Pinho: Standing over Paulina in the court’s hallway like a protective mother hen.

Gina Merino: I didn’t really do anything, but I stood there with her and it made her feel better. It made her feel protected. And there were the guys.

Faith E. Pinho: Bobby, his father, a couple uncles, all standing in a huddle on the other side of the court’s hallway divided by that big staircase.

Gina Merino: I looked at them with my blue hair and walked over there and I just was like, “Hi.”

Faith E. Pinho: Now, looking back, I can see that whole scene with so much more clarity. That anticlimactic day in court wasn’t as anticlimactic as I had thought. Because just that little gesture of Gina standing beside Paulina in the courthouse hallway — that was enough to set fire to the bridges Gina had started to rebuild over the past two decades.

Gina Merino: All I did was walk into a courtroom and stand next to her. And then they saw me. They called my family.

Faith E. Pinho: The fallout for Gina’s family was instant.

Gina Merino: By the time I left the courthouse and I got to the airport, my mother called me and said, “They just called and tried to blackball all your brothers.”

Faith E. Pinho: In this moment, Gina was sacrificing her own relationships with her family for this one cousin who she had only just met. But she knew that Paulina was going to need her now more than ever. Because Gina knew something that nobody else knew then — not Bobby, not his family and certainly not the court. There was a crucial bit of information that had yet to come out.

Gina Merino: They don’t even know she’s married yet. They’re about to find out, and s—’s going to hit the fan.

Faith E. Pinho: Nobody knew except Gina that Paulina had remarried.

::

Paulina’s first few months outside her tight-knit family felt like a complete paradigm shift.

Paulina Stevens: It was like someone took a filter off and I was seeing in black and white for my whole entire life. And finally, when that filter came off, it took a little while. Things were kind of fuzzy, and every day it got more and more clear.

Faith E. Pinho: The farther away she got from her upbringing, the more Paulina started questioning every detail about the world she came up in.

Paulina Stevens: Like, “Oh, why weren’t we allowed to get married on paper?” You know, “Why did they make me so dependent on them? Why was I lectured every week if I didn’t put a cup the right way? What is all of this?”

Faith E. Pinho: Around this time, Paulina discarded pretty much everything that reminded her of her old life, including the cards. She stopped fortunetelling.

Paulina Stevens: I was really, really resentful in my practice. I felt like everything, my whole life, was turned upside down. Part of it was that that’s the only thing I was allowed to do. And so I felt like cards are not real. Like all this stuff is fake.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina never went back to her shop by the beach.

Paulina Stevens: I just was like, “I can’t do this. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

Faith E. Pinho: Instead, Paulina began thinking about whether she might branch out into another field. But to do that, she would probably need more than a sixth-grade education.

Paulina Stevens: I had always wanted to go back — go to school. It’s not even “go back to school.” I barely went to elementary school.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina signed up for adult learning classes at a community college. She wanted to get her high school diploma. At almost 24 years old, she went to school for the first time in 12 years.

Paulina Stevens: I wanted to learn, period. I liked school. I wanted to learn. I was interested. After my first class, I was hooked.

Faith E. Pinho: She enrolled in courses in political science and gender studies.

Paulina Stevens: I love it all — the history, writing classes, psychology. I was so interested. I wanted to major in psychology.

Faith E. Pinho: But it was so hard to feel at ease. Paulina was in a new environment with new expectations. She wasn’t used to having homework or working with classmates on projects.

Paulina Stevens: I do not feel, even now, if I’m in a room full of American people, I don’t feel comfortable. I really don’t.

Faith E. Pinho: The rapid transition to a mainstream-American-style life wasn’t always easy. And that’s when Paulina would lean on Gina, the only other person who knew what it was like to be Romani and yet not, an outsider and yet not.

Paulina Stevens: I don’t feel comfortable.

Gina Merino: It goes away. I promise it does.

Paulina Stevens: It’s been a while and I still —

Gina Merino: It has not been a while. It’s been 25 years for me. You just started. It hasn’t been a while. It goes away, I promise.

Faith E. Pinho: I sat down with Gina and Paulina together one afternoon. They were jumping over each other’s sentences like sisters, sharing what they found to be the weirdest things about mainstream American culture. Little things like assigned seats at weddings.

Paulina Stevens: Why would you pick where somebody is sitting? It’s so weird to me. You pick where somebody else sits when they come to your wedding.

Gina Merino: — or someone sits down. Who? Who has the time to do it? Why?

Paulina Stevens: What the hell?

Faith E. Pinho: They talked for hours, reminiscing on their shared backgrounds. The things they hated. The things they missed.

Gina Merino: I miss food. I miss watching the girls dance. I miss watching the boys drink. I miss the smells of cigarettes. I miss being a girl serving on people.

Paulina Stevens: All the things that you hate at the time.

Gina Merino: All the reasons why I left.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina was feeling this too. Just because she walked away didn’t mean she could let go of her culture just like that. And Gina, with her signature tough love, empathized with Paulina, gave her a little hope.

Gina Merino: When I first left and I would go to places, like if I had a job, you can’t tell on my face but I’m like, “I’m the only Gypsy in here, and I feel so out of place right now. I feel like I’m not supposed to be here.” I don’t feel that way anymore, by the way. If you feel that, it goes away.

Faith E. Pinho: So Paulina kept going deeper and deeper into the outside world, kept trying out new things and exploring how she wanted to present herself.

Paulina Stevens: Today I’m wearing a crop top and sweatpants, which is so unacceptable. That’s like, you know, “Only whores wear those things.” That’s what I would get told growing up. And I am still struggling with what to wear. Yeah, a lot of long dresses. I’m trying to get away from that. It’s just hard.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina was in her early 20s, and for perhaps the first time, she started feeling like it. She wanted to dress up. She wanted to go out.

Paulina Stevens: And I wanted to date, too. I wanted to go out on a date with Matt.

Faith E. Pinho: This guy.

Matt Verminski: I’m sure there was something back there in my mind that was like, “That girl is kind of cute.”

Faith E. Pinho: Matt. Her client. Matt had been seeing Paulina as his psychic and life coach for a while. They were growing closer. And she had shown Matt new sides of himself, helped him turn his life around.

Matt Verminski: She would give me these little doses of her power, and it changed my life.

Faith E. Pinho: And as Matt was wrapping up his package deal with Paulina, she gave him one final assignment.

Paulina Stevens: I was like, “Write a little goal list of what you’re looking for, what you want,” or something.

Matt Verminski: She said, “Make a list of all the qualities or attributes of what you want in your next mate.”

Paulina Stevens: He wrote something like what he wants in a partner.

Matt Verminski: And so I talked about what I was looking for and all these different attributes. And at the end of that, I said, “I want somebody that’s just like you.”

Paulina Stevens: And he’s like, “Someone kind of like you.”

Matt Verminski: I just felt like I needed to express how I felt.

Paulina Stevens: It felt like a love letter, but he didn’t say “I love you.”

Matt Verminski: She admitted feeling the same.

Paulina Stevens: You know? But it was like saying “I love you” without saying “I love you.”

Matt Verminski: It just felt really good inside.

Paulina Stevens: It made me have a little warm, fuzzy feeling.

Matt Verminski: It was like a childish love.

Paulina Stevens: And at the same time, it was kind of sneaky or something. I was like, “I don’t understand what it means.”

Faith E. Pinho: But, you know. I had to ask.

Faith E. Pinho: Did that ever trip you up because you were married, even though you were checked out of your relationship with Bobby?

Paulina Stevens: It really didn’t. Because we didn’t act on it, you know? But I felt like I could potentially be with someone that has similar values. But I never thought that I could be with an outsider. I was just like, “Oh, it’s a nice —” You know, it was like a fantasy.

Faith E. Pinho: I asked Matt about this time too.

Faith E. Pinho: Were you concerned about what her family would think or what Bobby would think?

Matt Verminski: No. I’m not worried about those people.

Faith E. Pinho: Were you worried about the fact that Paulina was still married, though?

Matt Verminski: No. Because it’s not really married.

Faith E. Pinho: But, you know, for Paulina and Bobby’s family — for “those people” — it was still a real marriage. But Matt didn’t see it that way because the marriage was never legally certified.

Matt Verminski: So, yeah, no guilt.

Faith E. Pinho: And so while Matt felt no guilt, Paulina was drowning in it. Because not only was she dating someone, she was dating this outsider, this client. So even after she was done with her community, Paulina still felt ashamed for wanting to see Matt.

Paulina Stevens: It was just physically being with him in public, it felt so wrong, and I didn’t know why. And also physical affection, we don’t do that. We don’t hold hands or anything like that.

Faith E. Pinho: She was constantly looking over her shoulder, afraid a family member might spot them together.

Matt Verminski: So a lot of our dating or courting, if you will, was on the DL.

Paulina Stevens: I didn’t feel present a lot of the time because I was just thinking of all the consequences. I was like — and I think he could tell — I was like, would check my phone and I didn’t want Gypsies to see me. I was still in this phase where, like, “I’m doing something so wrong.”

Faith E. Pinho: But Paulina wouldn’t stop. As she was getting her feet under her, as the custody case wound its way through court, Paulina started spending more and more time with Matt.

Paulina Stevens: He was so entrepreneurial, and I was very attracted to that. I saw the way that he was taking charge. He just kind of knew how to take care of things. And I was like, “I like that. I need someone that can do that.”

Faith E. Pinho: And Matt fit into her life so easily. Matt had known the girls since they were just toddlers playing in the back of Paulina’s psychic shop when he would visit as a customer. The girls were used to having him around.

Matt Verminski: And so I feel like we were doing really good at setting up structure and responsibilities and just providing, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s “normal.” It’s more like I’m trying to pour into them — we’re trying to pour into them everything we know that is good and consistent.

Faith E. Pinho: Matt was a consistent presence in Paulina’s life. And so eventually she stopped caring what other people thought.

Paulina Stevens: For some weird reason I just didn’t feel like hiding anymore. I was just like, “I really don’t give a s—. We’re dating. It’s not that big of a deal. I really don’t care.”

Faith E. Pinho: She didn’t care because, eventually, she stopped being around anyone from her community, including her mom. Paulina moved out. Matt helped her rent her own place in San Diego County, over an hour south of where she had been living in L.A.

Paulina Stevens: I didn’t feel like living with them anymore, so I had got my own place. They were not OK with that. I was already on my way out, but then once I went public with my relationship, that was the end.

Faith E. Pinho: For a family that thought getting friendly with a client was taboo, dating one? That crossed a line.

Paulina Stevens: They decided that me dating an American was the, you know, that was the last straw.

Faith E. Pinho: Random people from Paulina’s past would slide into her DMs just to say they didn’t approve.

Paulina Stevens: Around that time, I remember I would just every day I’d be blocking people. Every day someone would call me from my family. I blocked multiple different numbers over and over and over again because I was like, “I don’t want to hear that you guys don’t approve because I really don’t give a s—.”

Faith E. Pinho: And eventually, Matt moved in with her and the girls. By December 2019, they had known each other for over two years. And one day they decided to seal the deal.

Paulina Stevens: We literally just got in the car one weekend and he was like, “Do you want to get married?” And I was like, “Yeah. F— it.”

Faith E. Pinho: So Paulina and Matt loaded up the car.

Paulina Stevens: We went to Vegas. We drove to Vegas.

Faith E. Pinho: Vegas, where Paulina went off with Bobby on a last-ditch attempt to save their failing marriage. And now Paulina was going with her all-American fiance to her American-style wedding in the most American place of all: a drive-in wedding chapel, complete with a pink Cadillac.

It could not have been more of a contrast to Paulina’s first wedding, the elaborate three-day affair with the hotel full of guests and traditional Romani music and dresses on dresses. This was worlds away.

Paulina Stevens: I had gotten my dress at Macy’s. I had bought it the day before. It was a one-shoulder, pretty, sparkling dress. It just fit me.

Faith E. Pinho: And to top off her outfit, Paulina selected one of the veils the Vegas chapel had in stock.

Paulina Stevens: And so they had let me wear this random veil that I’d picked out.

Faith E. Pinho: Matt wore a black suit with a silver bowtie. And instead of hundreds of extended family members, at this wedding, there was no one.

Paulina Stevens: The photographer was the witness. And I didn’t think it’d be so emotional. We didn’t have vows or anything like that.

Faith E. Pinho: And there, in the little white wedding chapel, against a backdrop of rich red curtains and gaudy gold pillars, Matt and Paulina were married.

Paulina Stevens: It felt so American. It was such an American fantasy that I had lived, and it was so funny.

Faith E. Pinho: But in this scenario, an American fantasy was a Romani nightmare.

Paulina Stevens: I’m worse than blackballed. I’m called marimé.

Faith E. Pinho: Marimé. Spiritually unclean.

Paulina Stevens: I’m like the worst of the worst.

Faith E. Pinho: This meant no one from her community could touch her. No one could eat with her or serve her food.

Paulina Stevens: Basically because I had sex with an American man — which I married. But it’s just the point that I am physically intimate or in any kind of relationship with an outsider.

Faith E. Pinho: I mean, I know of other Romani people who married non-Romani people and still kept some ties to the community. But considering everything else Paulina had already done, as Gina put it, this wedding was beyond unthinkable.

Gina Merino: So that was one problem, her leaving. The second problem was she had an American person as her spouse. And then the third problem and the worst of it all was she still had their kids. Their kids.

Faith E. Pinho: Even Gina could see this was a huge deal.

Gina Merino: Believe me, people know about what she did.

Faith E. Pinho: And people were pissed. Especially members of Paulina’s own family. Because every decision Paulina made to distance herself further from her culture made their lives worse. It affected their status in the community. Paulina was jeopardizing her family’s reputation, her sisters’ chances at getting married, whether they could attend parties and weddings. It affected everything.

Gina Merino: So everybody was after her. And it was all in the name of the culture, what the culture says is the right thing to do.

Faith E. Pinho: I really wanted to know how Paulina’s family felt. And I did have one really brief and terse call with Paulina’s grandfather. He didn’t want me to record.

He told me that Paulina had gotten everything she wanted: She had a new husband, a new life, and in the process, she’d ruined her family. That’s when his voice broke. He said he couldn’t even see his great-granddaughters anymore, Paulina’s two girls. She had taken them away from everyone.

And then he hung up on me.

Gina Merino: In the Gypsies’ eyes, it’s the worst thing in the world to bring children up in an American household. You don’t put them in that lifestyle. It’s wrong. So, yeah, that makes it way worse. They’re tainted. You’re tainting the children.

Faith E. Pinho: “Tainting the children” by raising them in an American-style household.

Gina Merino: First of all, I don’t think she’s keeping her children in the culture that much. I think she’s representing the American culture more.

Faith E. Pinho: The future of the children would soon be decided in court. These hearings were meant to determine which parent was a better fit to raise the girls by scrutinizing the life the girls would have under Paulina and under Bobby, which meant putting the Romani way of life on the stand.

It was January 2021, almost exactly one year after I went to the courthouse to meet with Paulina and Gina, and now came the actual hearing. This time it was a Zoom courtroom. And because it was a private custody hearing, I wasn’t allowed to attend. But Paulina agreed to hop on a Zoom call with me at the end of each day in court to give me a recap.

Faith E. Pinho: How long did it last today?

Paulina Stevens: From 10 to about 4:17.

Faith E. Pinho: You must be exhausted.

Paulina Stevens: Yeah, I am. And I’m super tired. I have a headache.

Faith E. Pinho: Sitting at her desk in her living room, Paulina did her best to stay composed in front of the webcam. But Zoom court is intense. There’s nowhere to hide.

Paulina Stevens: Virtually, you are literally face to face. Whenever someone rolls their eyes or scratches their head, you’re noticing everything.

Faith E. Pinho: And everything was entirely too much. It was like a nightmare looking at everyone right in the eye as they testified.

Paulina Stevens: It really shattered my view on family. And so many family members that I thought loved me and said that they would always be there for me no matter what ended up going against me.

Faith E. Pinho: Paulina had to sit there and take it as each hour felt worse and worse, poking into every aspect of her life. And though I never got an interview with Bobby, I finally did get to talk to someone who had his best interest at heart, who knew that Bobby was very upset — over Matt.

Richard Sullivan: Bobby had concerns about Matt because he had two DUIs, domestic violence conviction, 20 years older than Pauline.

Faith E. Pinho: This is Richard Sullivan, Bobby’s lawyer, who represented him in the custody battle.

Richard Sullivan: So red flags went up, as they probably would for any parent in that scenario.

Paulina Stevens: They’re trying to say that the kids are not safe with me and my husband.

Faith E. Pinho: Richard said that Bobby was concerned about Matt’s domestic violence conviction — the thing that brought Matt into Paulina’s psychic shop back in 2017.

Richard Sullivan: And that’s how she met Matt: reading his palm. Although Matt says to the court that she was his life coach. So his life coach was 22 years old, 21 years old, and he’s 20 years older and she’s his life coach? I question that.

Faith E. Pinho: Bobby’s family did too. And they worried that the girls would lose their heritage by living in this American-style household.

Richard Sullivan: Bobby wanted his girls to know his culture, no doubt about it.

Faith E. Pinho: And the best way for the girls to know their culture, Bobby’s side argued, was through their big Romani family.

Richard Sullivan: And as you may know, the Romani culture are very family-oriented people in that they get together every week on the weekends and celebrate family. And I believe that that’s how you pass on history, culture. And their culture has been passed on, as you may know, for thousands of years.

Faith E. Pinho: Richard argued that Paulina was pulling the girls away from their families by living so far away. That she didn’t have to move an hour south. She did it, he said, to be inconvenient.

Richard Sullivan: And she moved, I think, to get away from Bobby, his family and her family. And I didn’t think that was best for the girls because it has a negative effect on Bobby to be able to participate in their lives because he becomes something akin to a favorite uncle. Because can he be at their little soccer games? No. Can he be at back to school nights all the time? Not necessarily. So the distance, when you have geography, that’s an impediment to sharing the children physically.

Faith E. Pinho: When I asked Paulina about this, she said she moved an hour away for a simple reason: She wanted to live in a gated community for safety, and there wasn’t anything affordable close by. While Paulina said she wanted Bobby in the girls’ lives, she said she didn’t want the girls around so much family all the time at the bustling Train Station.

Paulina Stevens: I think they’re trying to get to a point that family is super important all the time, every day. And then we’re trying to get to the point that there’s too much. You’re dealing with everybody getting together and cooking and eating. And it sounds fun and it’s nice. It really is. But not every day. Especially for a child. They have nowhere to sit. They have nowhere to sleep. All of these people are piled on top of each other.

Faith E. Pinho: But the biggest argument Paulina made was this: If the girls stayed under Bobby’s care, they probably would drop out of school. Bobby’s lawyer rejected that.

Richard Sullivan: Bobby testified that he supported the children, the girls’ education, and would support it in the future.

Faith E. Pinho: Even though he doesn’t have more than a middle school education himself, and although many Romani children don’t continue education, Bobby argued that he would make sure their girls would go to school.

Richard Sullivan: They would support the girls in whatever endeavor they were desirous of going or doing. That was my understanding. They, again, were child-focused on giving them a good life and letting them make their choices as they grow.

Paulina Stevens: I am not claiming that everybody in the Romani Gypsy culture doesn’t support schooling or women’s rights or education. But with my experience and with my family, that has been the case.

Faith E. Pinho: Listening to how these two sides went at each other over a multi-day custody hearing, it almost seemed to me that it wasn’t just about which parents would get more time with the girls. It was about which culture had a claim over the girls’ future — which culture would raise them better.

But Richard didn’t see it that way. In fact, he said, this case didn’t have to be about the culture at all if it weren’t for Paulina weaponizing it.

Richard Sullivan: Well, I don’t think this case turned on the Romani culture. This case was about a mom that didn’t value the father, that wanted to move away, have a relationship with another man.

I think she used the Romani culture as a sword, so to speak. “I’m the victim. I need to get away. The bad guys are after me.” I didn’t buy that at all. Hopefully she’ll appreciate Bobby now or in the future because he’s a good dad and he loves them.

Faith E. Pinho: The fact is, Paulina’s custody hearing would affect more than the two girls and their parents. The ramifications of this hearing would ripple out into the community.

Paulina Stevens: So this case is a really big deal because I am one of the first women to fight a custody battle in my family against the Romani family.

Richard Sullivan: I guess she’s proffering to the court that this is such a cult-like culture that is kind of demonic or controlling. And that’s not what I perceived from talking to the family or looking at the facts.

She had her freedom, but she presents otherwise to the public, I guess to say, “I’m the victim. Woe is me. Everybody feel sorry for me. I broke away, yet I haven’t really. Rah rah me.” Right? Is that really true?

Faith E. Pinho: The hearings wrapped up. And soon the commissioner reached a decision.

Paulina Stevens: I just couldn’t believe it.

Faith E. Pinho: The outcome and the impact: That’s next week on the final episode of “Foretold.”