The Shame Doesn't Belong to You — Reclaiming Identity After Abuse | The Tepe Story
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shame is the abuser's final weapon — and it's the one that keeps working long after they're gone. Shame for staying. Shame for not seeing it sooner. Shame for what you tolerated. Shame for needing help. That internal voice telling you you're weak, stupid, broken — that's not your voice. It was installed by someone who needed you to believe you were the problem.
Put it down. Not all at once. Piece by piece.
The final episode of our coercive control series is about what true crime coverage never touches: healing. The identity you excavate after someone dismantled it. The shame you learn to put down. The boundaries you rebuild after years of being punished for having them. The therapist who gets it and the waitlist that keeps you from finding one. And the community of survivors carrying the same silence you are — people who look at you and say "I know," and that two-word sentence does more than a year of advice from someone who hasn't been there.
Monique Tepe built something extraordinary while carrying years of alleged fear. She chose Spencer. She chose parenthood. She chose joy. This episode honors what she built — and speaks to everyone still building.
You are not what happened to you. You are what you build after.
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#HiddenKillers #MoniqueTepe #SpencerTepe #MichaelMcKee #TheShameDoesntBelongToYou #HealingAfterAbuse #CoerciveControl #SurvivorIdentity #TraumaRecovery #YouAreWhatYouBuildAfter
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.4 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:06.6 | I want to start this one a little differently. |
| 0:08.3 | No crime scene, no court records, no alleged offenses, |
| 0:11.3 | were legal timelines. |
| 0:12.3 | I want to start with what Monique Tepey built. |
| 0:16.4 | She married Spencer in December of 2020, |
| 0:18.7 | a wedding in Columbus, Ohio, |
| 0:20.5 | during a year when the world was |
| 0:22.2 | barely functioning. And they did it anyway. They had two children. Spencer mentored a young boy |
| 0:29.1 | named Hans through Big Brothers, Big Sisters, showed up for that kid's education, his future, his |
| 0:34.3 | life, in a way that the people around him said was consistent with who Spencer was |
| 0:38.8 | at his core. He was a dentist whose co-workers called 911 when he didn't show up because it was |
| 0:44.3 | that unthinkable. She was described by everyone who knew her as devoted, loving, a wonderful mother. |
| 0:51.2 | They went to football games. They celebrated birthdays at the office. They built a home. |
| 0:56.6 | And Monique did all of that while carrying something most people around her couldn't see. |
| 1:03.0 | According to family members, she talked about being afraid of her ex-husband for years. |
| 1:07.9 | Her wedding vows, as reported publicly referenced, wrong relationships and waterfalls of tears. |
| 1:14.9 | The scars visible even on the happiest day of her new life. She didn't wait for the fear to leave |
| 1:22.8 | before she started living. She built alongside of it, not despite it it with full knowledge of it that's not |
| 1:28.9 | denial that's not recklessness that's defiance and it's the most human thing i've encountered in |
| 1:34.6 | this entire case it's just part five on our series and it's the part that the true crime coverage |
... |
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