Hoax Blogger Says She's 'Struggling'

June 14, 2009— -- Blogger Becca Bueshausen came under intense scrutiny from an online community this week after they uncovered her posts about being pregnant with a terminally ill baby were false. Bueshausen wrote about her decision to carry the sick child to term, but she was not actually pregnant. Earlier in the week she spoke to the Chicago Tribune, but she has refused other requests to speak with the media. She sent the following apology to ABC News, which she also posted on her personal blog.

Becca Bueshausen's Apology to Readers

I am sorry.

I know this post will not change what has been done. I don't expect it to, but I do hope it helps with some of the hurt that I have caused.

I have come to know a lot about some of you in the last few months through your shared words with me, and I now want to tell you some about me. Not, "April's Mom," not the fiction, just ME...

I am a 26 year old woman who loves to draw and paint. I've worked for years in the social service (not a liscensed [sic] social worker; never said I was) field. I am a Christian and while I wrote many of my posts under false contexts, the God I shared with all of you and wrote about is still God; the Creator or [sic] life, Father and Savior.

In my life I've had good days and I have also dealt with a lot of pain, including the sorrow over the loss of life. I don't say that to garner your sympathy or to lessen your anger. I say it because it is true. Was the loss present day? No. But true, none the less. In my "calendar past," perhaps, but still very much so in my present day to day.

I lied and I am not trying to hide that, nor am I trying to minimize it. Worse still, I lied to a community of people whose only intention was to support me through this time and that is wrong, and for that I am sorrier than you could know.

The #1 question I have been asked in the last few days is what I would tell people online who followed my story, who are now upset to find it is not true. -- The simplest and most honest way that I can answer why I started lying (even prior to my blog) and started my blog is that I am struggling. I have been dealing with unresolved pain that weighs heavy on my heart and which I have been unable to handle alone.

Like I referenced above, I am no stranger to losing a baby. I have suffered this type of loss, more than once, and while the circumstances and time frames vary (spanning from between my college years through just this last year), the pain is very constant.

Is what I have explained above and the other pains that are unseen and only in my heart an excuse for all of this? -- No. Absoltely not. But I will be the first to say I don't even understand all of my actions.

I never imagined the magnititude of all of this; the lies, the relationships formed, the entire thing ...

I started writing and people responded. Almost overnight I was receiving e-mails from people who at one point had been pregnant and unmarried, or had suffered loss, or were Christian but believed in the sanctity of life in all circumstances. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my own life, or anything I ever expected. In part, I was just so surprised by the response. It taught me that not all Christian circles are the same and it really gave me a glimpse of something that my eyes had been closed to. And as my readership grew, I just continued to feed the story.