Rose-Colored Glasses
A note from Nicole, Karoline Borega's daughter
If you’re been following along with us through Season Four of Betrayal, you’ll know that Karoline isn’t the only person who Joel hurt; their kids experienced his deception, too. Since we started releasing this season, there’s been a lot of curiosity around how Karoline decided what details to share with her kids about their father's affair. In a special post, we want to share an essay from Nicole herself — and the reality of living through betrayal as a daughter.
For years, my family and I walked through the halls of different substations in Colorado Springs, greeting people with smiles and unrealized painful ignorance. And after April 11th, 2022, everything changed. We learned about my father’s secret life on that day — and for months after, we saw more and more that his actions were not discreet to his coworkers. Rumors of his infidelity and bad behavior as a civil servant had been swirling for years, long before we’d learned the truth. But back then, I walked around those halls with pride and innocence, not knowing that the people who were supposed to protect my city looked down on my family with condescending pity for the father we didn’t know was letting us down.
I’m filled with rage when I think about how long my mom, my brother, and I were kept in the shadows: denied the truth, denied clarity, denied the opportunity to understand. I know some will think that it was not their place to shatter the illusion for my family — but it’s hard to describe the sense of loyalty and trust I had in my father and his coworkers. They swore an oath to protect the public and adhere to ethical standards. But when it came to my family and exposing hard truths, those ethical standards seemed not to apply.
To break the cycle of betrayal, I felt the need to know everything — the truth about who my dad really was. I realized that being in the dark does not protect you. It isolates you and leaves you defenseless. Knowledge is power, yes — but more than that, it is armor. In my world, betrayal hid behind loving smiles. And now, I would rather know too much than not enough. To those who say my mom should have kept “adult stuff between adults” and not involved her children, I would like to remind them: I was not too young to be lied to. My dad and his coworkers lied to me. Their silence was not mercy. It only kept me in the dark — and being in the shadows means you cannot tell what’s fake from what’s real. You cannot protect your heart if you do not know what is threatening it.
