Insight From Sherri Panini's Lawyer, Comeback Coach and Therapist on Life Now ...Middle East

After being accused of faking her own kidnapping, Sherri Papini has been focused on rehabilitating her mental health with help from her therapist, lawyer and a comeback coach.

During an exclusive interview for Us Weekly’s cover story about Papini’s life now, therapist Dr. Stephen Diggs, lawyer Chase Kinney and comeback coach Tim Storey opened up about the work that went into helping her heal.

“Primarily right now, what’s happening is there’s this spinoff of everything, of ‘I have a new story,’ right? Or this is a new something, and that could not be farther from the truth. I have always maintained that I was kidnapped, that I was tortured, that I was held against my will,” Papini told Us while answering burning questions about her case. “I’ve always maintained complete accuracy about the injuries. I just kept the identity of my captor secret. I have never once — and even when you see me in court, I realize that I did sign the plea agreement that was built by the federal government, it was their words that I agreed to, given that there were no other options.”

Sherri disappeared in November 2016 after going for a jog in her neighborhood. She resurfaced 22 days later and claimed she had been beaten and branded by captors. Sherri was ultimately arrested in 2022 for orchestrating her abduction. She pleaded guilty to a federal judge later that year and was sentenced to 18 months in jail for committing mail fraud and lying to a federal officer about being kidnapped.

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Sherri was also ordered to pay more than $300,000 in restitution for losses incurred by the California Victim Compensation Board, the Social Security Administration, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She was released from prison in August 2023.

“Even in my speech in court, I say I lied. I did not say I made up a kidnapping and I hoaxed a kidnapping. So, there’s no new story. It’s the same testimony that I’ve given, other than I was too afraid, which is quite normal for victims of domestic abuse and quite normal for victims that have gone through severe trauma like I did,” she explained. “Ordinarily, women that are sexually assaulted don’t come forward for decades, for years, and so for me, that was the safest option. And it is definitely not a new story. It is the same story. I’m just brave enough and capable enough to tell you the identity of my captor.”

Earlier this year, Investigation Discovery’s Caught in the Lie featured Papini’s claims that her ex-boyfriend James Reyes was allegedly responsible for her kidnapping. Reyes disputed the allegations when interviewed by government officials and was never officially charged in connection to her kidnapping.

Sherri’s focus is now on gaining custody back of her two kids with ex-husband Keith Papini. While navigating court appearances, Sherri has been putting in the work to address her past trauma, which she outlined in her June memoir, Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie: A Comprehensive Account of Her Disappearance, the Layers of Deception and the Journey to Uncover Reality.

Keep scrolling for an inside look at Sherri’s life now through the lens of those who have been working with her in the years since the kidnapping drama:

What Inner Work Has Sherri Been Doing?

Diggs, who got permission from Sherri to discuss her case, reflected on addressing her self-defeating personality disorder.

“People with Sherri’s background have a hard time telling who is dangerous and who is not dangerous. She could not tell how dangerous James was. And that’s typical of people with her personality problem,” he noted to Us about Sherri’s trauma with men. “The way [we worked on it] is to begin to be a fatherly figure for her. We tend to put people into archetypes. So I would place myself in a fatherly position where I want to be protective of her and let her feel safe with me as a protector. So she can start thinking that men can be protective and men can be safe.”

Diggs continued: “Instead of submitting, which is what her personality disorder does, they start to become assertive and stand up and say, ‘I don’t like it when you do that.’ And eventually patients can see people coming who are going to treat them badly. She’s got some ways to travel still, but she’s well down the road on that. She’s starting to get much better.”

Sherri also worked with Storey to take steps to improve her life.

“I think that she was very careful at first what to say. But the more I work with her, I feel that she realizes that she is wrong in some of the choices that she obviously made and feels terrible. What I have seen — that I give her credit for — is that she has taken responsibility for her actions to me,” he noted. “She is willing to walk through the process of healing restoration, but also part of that is making amends with people and apologizing to even more people than maybe she thought she needed to.”

What Steps Did Sherri Take to Prepare Herself for Her Return to the Public Eye?

Storey broke down the day-to-day process with Sherri.

“No. 1 is that when you are trying to help somebody from a setback into some form of a comeback, there are steps. People have to become awake and I feel that for a while she was asleep walking through things. But to become awake means to be conscious and to really come to the conclusion about how what she did affected people,” he explained. “Second, you have to take proper inventory, so we don’t get to a point where we’re fixing the blame, but we’re fixing the problem.”

He added: “The third one is you have to partner with the right people and that was getting people out of her life that have not necessarily been positive for her. Then you have to find proper principles and guidelines to live by truth, honesty and integrity.”

What Obstacles Has Sherri Faced?

According to Diggs, the “hardest part” was going through therapy “in front of the public eye.”

“There were a few setbacks where she got rid of lying and telling outright lies pretty quickly. But mostly she would evade telling people the truth and get into some conflict because she’d evaded something,” he recalled. “So there were a few setbacks there.”

Storey, meanwhile, told Us about Sherri’s difficult first months after getting out of prison.

“There was a lot of crying from her. But what happens is that all of us have been labeled,” he explained. ”A label creates a stigma. So not everybody wants to let Sherri Papini go from this label or this stigma, but that’s OK. She’s not trying to just live her life to the audience of their own personal approval.”

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Has Public Scrutiny Caused Setbacks?

“Paradoxically, all of this public exposure actually helped the therapy. That’s because the primary symptom of someone with self-defeating personality disorder is a tendency to cope by submitting and lying. Now in this situation, there were a lot of people — especially men — who were trying to make her submit,” Diggs noted. “So we were able to use their imposition of their power onto her as a way to get her past that tendency to submit. So she got stronger faster because of that.”

He continued: “She had to assert herself to this larger community that she lives in and this world that she lives in that’s judged her so harshly and lacked any curiosity about the truth of what may have happened. So she had to stand up and I thought it was great. I did spend a lot of time making sure she was strong enough to endure the scrutiny that was coming her way and to help her not to get defensive when she did get scrutinized. But she did that therapy well and it’s a good time for her to speak out because it’s making her stronger. The more she stands up, the stronger she gets.”

Sherri’s attorney, who deals with her custody case with Keith, expressed how proud she was of how far her client has come.

“My goal was to get these kids back to her. And I knew that she was going to give her story and I wanted her to give her story after she’s been taking the hits for so long. Eventually, she’ll get her moment,” Kinney told Us. “She did her time. She’s been in therapy and she’s done all the things she needs to do. She’s literally jumped through every hoop anybody’s asked for.”

While discussing his time with Sherri, Storey said the public isn’t taking into account the “several-year journey” that is required for healing.

“Many people are looking for a quick fix and a quick restoration. I don’t see this with her. What I see is something [called] recovery and discovery,” the life coach shared. “We’re already working on her speaking to incarcerated women. We’re working on her speaking at women’s groups and women that have been through trauma. This is very healing for her in her journey, but also can be very healing to other people that these doors are opening for her.”

How Has Sherri’s Ongoing Custody Battle Played a Role?

“Is it going to be a process to reunite her with the kids? Yeah, it is. But we have all that already dealt with. It’s ready. We’re ready to start now. We have therapists for reunification. We have the proper boundaries in place,” Kinney explained about the ongoing process for Sherri to gain back custody of her kids after serving her time behind bars. “We have the house, we have the place to be. We just need the go ahead by the judge, which I intend on getting.”

The Most Shocking Revelations From Part 2 of Our Sherri Papini Interview

What Goals Does Sherri Have for the Future?

Diggs weighed in on how Sherri is using the tools he provided her with when it comes to her personal life, saying, “She has chosen men that were not good for her. Her main goal is to stand up and be her own person and not need man at all to survive. The second main goal is to find a man to have a relationship with that is going to be healthy for her and who’s going to do the give and take of a relationship in a very good way.”

The therapist added, “We will have to see if [the man she is dating now] is The One, but she’s getting there. Sometimes you have to do one or two relationships on the way to the good one.”

Kinney, for her part, told Us that Sherri had made huge strides.

“She did start very timid and she’s not timid anymore. When I first met her, she was so scared of men in general. She’s not that person anymore and she’s a woman in a woman’s world and she’s owning it and I think it’s amazing. It’s a beautiful thing to watch,” she gushed. ”She’s done a lot of work. I think prison helped that. I told her it would.”

As for Storey, he took Sherri as a client free of charge and is looking forward to keeping that work going.

“The next steps would be to get her out there telling her stories,” he explained to Us. “And then the other side is for her to be more consistent in the credibility and integrity of her lifestyle, how she conducts herself and the choices she makes in the words that she says.”

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