Here's What Sherri Papini's Therapist Thinks Happened During Kidnapping Incident

Despite serving time for lying to federal agents about her abduction, California mom Sherri Papini now claims she really was kidnapped — just by someone else — and her longtime therapist says he “absolutely” believes her, adding a new twist to an already infamous hoax. 

Papini made national headlines in 2016 after disappearing on her afternoon jog near her home in Redding, California. Twenty-two days later, she reappeared, bruised and battered, claiming that she had been kidnapped, starved, beaten and branded by two masked Hispanic women. 

Investigators were suspicious from the beginning; six years later, after male DNA found in Papini’s underwear was traced back to her ex-boyfriend, Papini was sentenced to 18 months behind bars for lying to federal investigators. 

But now, Papini is back, saying that her story was altered but not entirely fabricated. In an upcoming four-part Investigation Discovery docuseries Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, the 42-year-old divorced mother-of-two claims that ex-boyfriend James Reyes carried out the kidnapping, rather than helping her stage a fraud as prosecutors alleged. 

The ordeal began as a consensual emotional affair with Reyes that turned into a nightmare after she “led him on,” Papini claims. A combination of shame and a fear that she would lose her children led her to lie about his identity after he released her, she said.

After Papini was caught in an earlier emotional affair, her ex-husband Keith Papini had her sign a post-nuptial agreement that would give him full custody of their children and leave her without assets if she was involved with another man.

“Yes, I lied about my ex-boyfriend’s identity. No, I did not lie about a fake kidnapping,” she told filmmakers. “I lied about the man who abducted me to keep him a secret. Everything else I said was true.”

Reyes, who did not return PEOPLE’s requests for comment, told investigators that Papini starved herself, and that he administered the various injuries to her body at her direction. He passed a polygraph when he was interviewed by police in 2020. 

However, in the docuseries, Papini also passed a polygraph when she answered “no” to an examiner who asked her whether she was free to leave during her 22 days with Reyes and whether she asked Reyes to brand her. 

Papini’s longtime therapist, Dr. Stephen Diggs, said he “absolutely [believes] she was abducted.”

“To think of this as a conscious hoax concocted by Sherri just doesn’t fit the facts we have here,” he said. 

Diggs, a licensed psychologist, believes Papini has Self-Defeating Personality Disorder, which is not currently recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. SDPD is characterized by a pattern of self-sabotaging behavior, generally in relationships, and manifests in those who are “passive” and eager to please those around them.

“They get into relationships in which they’re not fulfilled and then they create a second secret life to get their needs met,” Diggs said. 

“She gets in touch with James so she can have a fleeting moment of getting her needs met and then return to her subservient role [with her husband],” he told filmmakers. “She wanted something short and that’s not how it turned out.”

“I believe that he abducted her and there were details of her torture that she was humiliated and embarrassed to talk about,” he continued. “I absolutely believe that Sherri did not ask for this. She did not want this to happen.”

Diggs believes that his client exhibits genuine signs of trauma — and that, after her work in therapy since 2016, she will never tell a “big lie to the public” again. 

“I believe what Sherri is telling us now is the truth,” Diggs said. “I believe that she has broken through a very difficult defense mechanism of lying, and she is now, most of the time, quite honest. Between our therapy — which she has worked very hard at, and the prison — she has stopped telling the big lies.”

Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie will premiere across two nights on Monday, May 26, and Tuesday, May 27, from 9 to 11 p.m. ET/PT on ID. Episodes will be available to stream on Max.