“Behind Closed Doors, There Were Many Issues”
Please first read the context of why this page has been created HERE.
Then please read THIS ARTICLE where Malana outlines why Joe Scoppino is a severe danger to women & children.
Some backstory into my & Joe Scoppino’s relationship (MORE TO COME):
While Joe and I may have appeared fine on the outside, behind closed doors, there were many issues– issues that were prevalent from the very beginning, meaning it was ALWAYS a toxic and dysfunctional relationship that was NEVER MEANT TO BE and full of red flags (like him throwing a towel at my face in annoyance just a few weeks after we’d met, which I told no one and ignored out of embarrassment).
Issues that had even landed us in couples counseling in 2018, three years PRIOR to ever learning about Liana Shanti who he’s scapegoated as a woman that’s ruined his life, myself included, claiming our marriage fell apart once I started learning from her/after our move to Florida in 2021.
We actually entered couples counseling just weeks after moving from New York to Maine in February of 2018. The move was a decision that was made primarily when Joe told me that he “wanted a sabbatical.”
Joe’s desire for a sabbatical came not long after he’d started gravitating towards meditation to help with his anxiety and depression – things that had been prevalent throughout our ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP – as well as towards men’s personal development books and videos. It seemed like something was sparking in him.
I was overjoyed that he was committed to trying a new location as we had been toying with the idea for some time. I, personally, would have loved most to go to Florida, which we had talked about and briefly looked into, but I was open to Maine, too, especially since we’d recently spent time there and had discussed it as a possible location and due to having business connections there who’d encouraged the move.
I was happy for Joe that he had found a place that was calling to him, and I was happy to support him and embark on a new chapter together. Therefore, we sold most of our things for a fresh start and moved away from all of our friends and family for the first time.
I had anticipated it being an exciting chapter of our lives, but instead, I found myself feeling isolated and Joe being more distant than ever.
I was crying daily and a chronic pain disorder I’d been living with flared up to the point of incapacitation some days– both of which Joe seemed to be COMPLETELY indifferent towards and unaffected by.
I actually remember just a few days after moving, I woke up from a nap next to Joe, and he looked blankly at me and said, “I want a divorce.” Seeing the shock on my face, he then said he was “just joking,” but I felt so hurt by it, especially during such a fresh, new chapter, that I left the room crying.
I remember it taking a while before he joined me in the living room (meaning, he was un-phased by me leaving upset), and any reassurance or semblance of empathy I received was only because I had to first explain to him why I found it hurtful. It wasn’t something he just naturally came out with.
(This is just one of many instances like these over the years, and it’s an extremely mild one compared to other intentionally cruel acts that of Joe’s done in an effort to crush my spirit and humiliate me. More to come on this.)
From there, a continued series of dysfunctional events within our marriage – abuses inflicted on me followed by me reacting to his abuse – led me to urge us to attend couples therapy, which I have documentation of below:
“(Joe) said that while he was meditating using an app called HeadSpace that he was getting flashes of sexual imagery that were homosexual in nature”
During therapy, Joe spoke heavily of his issues with his family, primarily his father. Our therapist actually recommended that Joe speak to a separate therapist one-on-one specifically regarding his family dynamics, but Joe did not pursue this.
Since Joe seemed to be aware of and working on his anger issues outside of counseling – his tendency to curse and yell at me had waned – we discontinued counseling after five sessions.
While there were still issues that hadn’t been resolved, Joe was still meditating regularly, and he had started attending a support group for men, and he was also reading self-help books– all of these were his own choices and things he himself had gravitated towards.
Additionally, he was continuing to speak with me regularly about issues he was aware of regarding his family– like how he felt like they didn’t listen to him or want him to be his own person and how he always felt like he needed their approval for everything.
This is what had sparked his desire for a sabbatical, after all– wanting space to explore being more independent and more of his own person and to help him dive deeper into the personal healing journey he seemed to be embarking on.
He also expressed to me that he didn’t feel he had much in common with his friend group anymore. This had even begun manifesting as physical symptoms when he told me that both times we visited New York for his friend’s weddings, he was getting a flare-up of hemorrhoids due to stress.
I share that detail because IT’S A SIGN OF DISTRESS, and it’s something that HE told ME he felt was DIRECTLY CONNECTED to people and places from his old life in New York. He said he felt like he was “acting” while in the weddings, that he felt fake, and like nothing was genuine.
He ALSO told me that while he was meditating using an app called HeadSpace that he was getting flashes of sexual imagery that were homosexual in nature and having to do with a younger boy.
Unbeknownst to him, I, too, was experiencing something similar when we would visit my parents in New York – I was having sexual imagery flash before my eyes when I was in the same room as my father.
Looking back, I can see it as if moving away from all we knew for the first time was helping to bring things to the surface. At the time, I wasn’t ready to face what was happening to me, so I didn’t share it with Joe. I also felt deeply embarrassed since it was my father, and I just wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening.
With Joe’s visions, his theory was that it was just his brain trying to keep him from having peace, and since he seemed so uncomfortable and ashamed about whatever he was seeing, I did not push him to talk about it, however, HE mentioned it frequently enough over the next couple of years that I know it was something he FELT DEEPLY DISTURBED BY AND WAS TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF.
NOTE: Joe’s visions above are something he experienced and was talking about ON HIS OWN,
imagery he had seen while listening to SOME OTHER GUIDED MEDITATION PROGRAM without my having ANYTHING to do with it (I was not a user of Headspace)
and PRIOR TO US EVER EVEN KNOWING WHO LIANA WAS,
yet he has painted Liana’s teachings/meditations as the start of when he was experiencing mental and emotional disturbances and began questioning everything from his upbringing, to his family dynamic, to his friendships
(despite him talking about some of these things in couple’s therapy and also having a health history of depression/anxiety, all BEFORE Liana).
Overall, while Joe appeared to be seeking guidance for issues he knew existed within himself through meditation and an in-person men’s group he was part of, I continued to remain the primary person dedicated to wanting to make things work within our marriage and plan a future together. It was touch and go, though, and there was even a period of time where we slept in separate rooms in our apartment.
“If We Divorce, Everyone’s Going to Think You Joined a Cult”
Then in late 2020 (which I’ll share more about that year at another time), I found Liana Shanti, and by January 2021, what I was learning through her teachings gave me some clarity into many of the issues that had been prevalent in my and Joe’s marriage and relationship from the start (hence the fact that we had attended therapy together).
At this point, I was finally ready to accept that Joe and I were not growing as a couple.
For example, I was in my early 30’s, and I desired to have a family – something Joe never quite seemed ready to discuss or plan for, even once expressing anger at me for bringing it up – and given that I was only getting older, I felt it was time to admit to myself that we didn’t share a vision for a future together.
Therefore, I initiated a conversation about us getting a divorce.
It wasn’t the first time I’d brought up divorce either (I remember blurting out that I wanted one during an exhausting argument a year or so prior regarding our future/having children, but I ultimately took it back– I still couldn’t picture myself without him despite feeling so lonely and aimless with him. This, I would come to learn, was trauma-bonding).
However, this time, I was feeling more grounded and more prepared to go our separate ways.
I asked nothing of Joe to help “save” our marriage. No ultimatum. No pressure to do anything. Just the opportunity for us to both face reality and admit we wanted different things in life.
However, over the course of an emotional few days, I agreed to give our marriage another chance. Joe insisted on his own that he wanted to try healing through Liana’s programs and given that he’d already been doing inner work for several years, it didn’t seem out of left field that he wanted to try this additional avenue.
During this conversation, I made it abundantly clear that I was committed to my healing path and to Liana’s teachings no matter what– that this was something I needed for myself after years spent looking for answers to things I personally needed support with. It was and is MY RIGHT to have personal needs and spiritual beliefs and to desire a partner that has similar values and goals as myself. To that point, we both agreed that we had free will to opt out of our marriage at any time if we no longer felt it was aligned.
Unfortunately, I was agreeing to give our marriage another chance against my better judgment given that when I had initially discussed us getting a divorce, Joe made a “joke” that I now know was a veiled threat when he said to me, “If we divorce, everyone’s going to think you joined a cult”– something he’s personally made sure of during and after our divorce.
Once we decided to stay together, we spent the next several months diving into Liana’s work– a decision she played no role in whatsoever.
Meaning, Joe and I each voluntarily purchased Liana’s healing and nutrition programs without any coercion or sales pitches from her.
Neither he nor I had ever had a one-on-one conversation with Liana or anyone affiliated with her business to try and get us to enroll in her programs.
Furthermore, Joe and I were both active students of Liana’s programs without any mandatory participation or consequences for inactivity. Joe participated frequently, and I witnessed both joy and relief from him around having a space where he could regularly give and receive support from others who were also students of Liana’s work.
During the time that Joe was a student of Liana’s, he made positive changes in his health, and though he’s begun denying those changes since our divorce/since discontinuing his studies with Liana, I have extensive documentation of him expressing sentiments such as the one below where he states, “I haven’t felt this good (physically speaking) in my entire life”:
“I Haven’t Felt This Good… in My Entire Life.”
He even detailed how he was able to study to become a health coach in the midst of life changes (such as our move to Florida) and how motivated he was by the work, describing how he “devoured” the information, and even thanked Liana for creating the program, sharing that it was an “awesome journey” for him. He said all of this just THREE WEEKS before he left our home and began smearing my and Liana’s name:
Additionally, Joe expressed joy at being a student of Liana’s inner healing programs, as well, and would often use her Facebook group as a therapeutic outlet:
He would even use the group to open up about some of the very issues and behaviors I’d witnessed and experienced from him (issues that had landed us in couples counseling several years before we’d ever heard of Liana), including admitting to abusive tendencies and his ability to MANIPULATE OTHERS:
Additionally, Joe shared insights into his upbringing, his struggles with porn addiction, and his awareness of his misogyny and tendency to objectify women, which he learned from his father and grandfather.
Joe also expressed grievances towards his mother who he’s since paired up with to help smear my and Liana’s name:
“He Was Able to Stop– Just Like That.”
However, once Joe began going deeper into his healing, the things he was facing about his life became too much for him, so he ran from what his heart knew to be true and went back to the “dysfunction” as he called it. Here’s something he shared with the group a little over a month before we separated that indicated he was close to leaving everything he’d been working for behind:
The months leading up to when Joe and I officially separated in March 2022 were indeed challenging, and that’s putting it lightly. Joe would yo-yo between having days where he’d tell me wanted to leave me, to days where he’d affirm that our marriage was being strengthened by the work we were doing, all of which created massive confusion and emotional pain for me and led to some poor business and career decisions due to not having a clear head. (More to come on what those final months were like.)
Then before officially separating, Joe tried getting me to stop doing my healing work, which showed me that he still had a total disregard for my needs and desires. I had already expressed to him when I chose to stay together instead of divorcing him that I was dedicated to my healing path no matter what, especially given that it was helping me to create so much positive change within my life.
For example– by the time we’d separated, I was sober, I’d healed a chronic pain disorder I’d been living with, I was in the best shape I’d ever been in, and I was feeling hopeful about the new direction my life was taking. Therefore, I preferred to divorce than to “go backwards” to the kind of life we’d been living that I was extremely unfulfilled by and that, since divorcing, I now see clearly was psychologically abusive.
So on March 18th, 2022, when Joe and I officially separated and he was done with Liana’s healing programs, he was able to stop– just like that.
He had free will to walk away, and so he did.
Liana never contacted him or begged for him to “come back,” and Joe didn’t contact Liana to express any grievances towards her.
In fact, shortly after leaving our apartment, Joe emailed Liana’s team to confirm if he was still eligible for certification in Liana’s nutrition program and to learn if he could stay in her health groups on Facebook. The email was forwarded to Liana, in which they had a peaceful exchange, with Joe being welcomed to continue his health journey through her nutrition program and groups and being wished all the best in life. Joe then followed up by thanking Liana for her wisdom.
“No Mention of Liana Being to Blame”
Unfortunately, not long after these exchanges, Joe’s access to all of Liana’s Facebook groups was ultimately terminated as it was revealed through cyber-harassment by my estranged parents in April of 2022 that he was telling a sob story of losing me to a cult with Liana being the reason our marriage fell apart.
Joe was aware of their harassment, and although I was being abused by him, too (and had been for 14 years behind closed doors), during moments of clarity due to his own stint with healing work, he would say things like this:
(Mother Wound and Life Path are names of healing programs we’d purchased from my spiritual teacher, Liana Shanti. When the abuse by my father surfaced the summer of 2021, I wrote a post in the Life Path Facebook group about what I was remembering and why the sexual scenes that would flash before my eyes whenever I stood close to him FINALLY made sense. When Joe wrote “With everything that’s happened the past few days,” he was talking about the ONGOING HARASSMENT AND BULLYING I WAS EXPERIENCING FROM MY ESTRANGED PARENTS.)
Joe 100% believed me when he learned that my father had sexually abused me.
He himself knows that men are capable of keeping dark secrets, telling serious lies, and inflicting harm on women, and during that period of time when he was supportive, he physically held me through my waves of grief, crying along with me, dancing with me to sad songs that helped me release my emotions, and, for what felt like the first time in our entire relationship, truly seeing me as something worth being protected and respected.
(That’s what I clung to when he began emotionally abusing me again. The hope that just maybe I glimmer of the man I saw for a few months straight would return to stay.)
Though, as it were, when Joe and I separated several months later, he was singing a whole new tune.
Unfortunately, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He had indeed made the “joke” (veiled threat) back in January 2021 about everyone thinking I’d joined a cult if we divorced, and then when we separated on March 18th, 2022, he was having outbursts about us being in a cult.
Though at the time, I told myself it was his way of working through grief and anger because I was officially choosing divorce vs. compromising on my healing path. Besides, there had been countless voluntary discussions and interactions, both intimately and with Liana’s community for months on end (as I showed with the screenshots) that demonstrated that he didn’t actually think we were in a cult.
Therefore, I wanted to believe that he was just using that word out of resentment and to hurt me (since I was choosing myself over him) and because he knew it’s something his family was thinking about us (who he was now going back to).
Plus, once we’d separated and he’d left our apartment, there were some initial conversations that I felt validated that he’d only said that word to be hurtful towards me– not because he was actually going to paint that narrative.
For example, below are excerpts from an email exchange between Joe and I in late March 2022, less than two weeks after we’d separated, where he expressed being on the same page about our divorce with no mention of Liana being to blame:
Therefore, I kept holding out hope that all I was facing was an emotionally wounded man who’d run scared back to his old life.
After all, if he truly thought we were divorcing because he left a cult while I’d stayed, why agree that we’re on the same page?
And why ask for continued access to a supposed cult leader and her teachings followed by thanking her for their wisdom?
“Joe Had Two Narratives”
What I have learned through this experience is that Joe had two narratives:
One narrative where he was claiming cult to family and friends as an excuse for why he was now getting divorced and living at his parents home.
And another narrative towards me where he made it seem like he agreed that, in the end, we just wanted different things. Until the truth began to come out.
As time passed and our communications waned, the fog began to lift so I could see clearly that whatever he needed to say to whoever to get things he felt entitled to – whether it was money, a roof over his head, sympathy from family and friends (even from me!), or continued access to Liana’s nutrition school - is exactly what he’d say.
Ultimately, Joe is someone who was/is feeling vengeful that I chose my own needs and desires over his, paired with feeling vengeful towards Liana for protecting me and her other students.
The affidavits he’s written are his way of getting back at me through the women I care about – the very women who he’d wished the best to when he emailed Liana – and as a way to get back at Liana for having the common sense to remove him from all of her Facebook groups (these groups were a privilege granted to those who purchased her programs but could be revoked at any time if deemed necessary).
Overall, what Joe has done by not taking any accountability for his choices – including manipulating me into staying with him by saying he wanted to try the healing path I was on when he had no genuine intention of peacefully stopping if it was no longer aligned for him – is to show his true colors and solidify why I wanted a divorce in the first place.
In reality, I left an abusive family and marriage, and Joe has continued that abuse to this very day by joining forces with the estranged family members/ex-husbands of Liana’s students, all in an attempt to cause severe harm to Liana and to the women she supports, myself included.
Pure misogyny. Using women when it served him, only to discard them when he didn’t “need” them anymore.
All screenshots from Joe Scoppino’s time as a student of Liana Shanti’s between February 2021 - March 2022 can be found below.
Ultimately, Joe was using Liana’s groups to receive emotional support and validation during what we know now was a half-hearted attempt at healing. I watched him JOYFULLY and VOLUNTARILY interact with the group. Yes, sometimes when he was having a hard day, I encouraged him to seek support there, but 99% of the time, his interactions were completely AT WILL. Looking back, we can all see now that he LOVED THE ATTENTION, being one of the only males, and he was able to receive so much emotional support from WOMEN, while seeming to give emotional support back… ONLY to then betray this very group and claim that they held him “emotionally hostage.” Pure misogyny. Using women when it served him, only to discard them when he didn’t “need” them anymore.
A Story About One of Joe’s Cruelest Acts
One morning, in the fall of 2015, I was working at my laptop when a notification popped up on my Facebook business page.
A photo had been posted to my wall. I clicked to check it out and saw, to my horror, that it was me. And my butt. In a thong.
I scrambled to delete it, catching only a quick glance of what appeared to be a bot account.
Joe was in the other room, and I frantically told him what I saw and that it was a photo HE had once taken.
With a slight smile on his face, he said “Oh yeahhh... I remember that photo," and went into detail from how I was posed to the pattern of my thong.
I remember feeling so confused. It was a photo taken on HIS old phone a few years prior that I thought was long gone, AND it wasn’t too over-the-top explicit that it was even all that memorable… we’d never even talked about it after it was taken.
Yet there he was describing it to a chilling T.
Not only that, but he wasn’t concerned!
He didn't rush to console me or provide any reassuring words like "I can’t believe that happened! I’m gonna help us get to the bottom of this!"
His one plausible explanation was, "We get bot accounts at work that post stuff to our page, too.”
I was like, “Umm... okay??? But that was a photo of ME. That YOU took! How did some bot get it? And how would they even know it was ME and where to post it?!"
I got an "I don't know, babe" and a shrug. That’s literally it.
And then I had to leave.
Because I had an appointment.
To go try on... a WEDDING DRESS.
So what did I do?
I rationalized. "Maybe someone hacked his phone years ago, stole the photo, figured out my name, looked up my social media, and decided to post it TODAY... of all days... yeah, that must be it!"
I had this whole far-reaching story because I was afraid to look closer, ask more questions, and pay attention to what my BODY was telling me… especially on that day.
“My days of pretending that I didn’t marry a SICK, TWISTED MAN are over.”
Because you know what I feel to be true?
That my own fiancé posted a half-naked photo of me to my public BUSINESS page for his own personal pleasure.
The fact that he didn’t even PRETEND to care, the SMIRK, the SHRUG, the fact that it was HIS photo that he could describe in DETAIL years later…
That’s what I FEEL to be true.
And after that day, there never was another photo incident again. And why bother? I feel he got what he wanted…
Which was to watch me humiliated, distraught, and feeling ashamed on a day that was meant to be happy and exciting for me. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT NARCISSISTIC MEN DO. (And it wasn’t the first time he’d tried ruining an important event for me.)
It also planted a seed of paranoia in my mind and made me feel scared to expand. I’d mention it to him periodically, even after getting married: "What if they come back again? As I keep growing my business?"
Of course, I was basically talking to myself– he didn't have ANYTHING to say. No words. No concern. No empathy. NOT ONE TIME.
What kind of man doesn’t care about something like that happening to their WIFE? To the person they claim to love?
But I carried on... ignoring the obvious, like I did with many, many other things.
Key Word: DID.
My days of pretending that I didn’t marry a SICK, TWISTED MAN are over.
“Joe was writing false affidavits for abusive fathers he did not know”
In the summer of 2022, I learned that my ex-husband, Joseph ‘Joe’ Scoppino, was writing false affidavits for abusive fathers he did not know in an attempt to help them win sole custody of their children.
Fast forward to the summer of 2023, and I learned that Joe Scoppino even went as far as to write a letter to help a family HE DID NOT KNOW to get their young adult daughter – an intelligent college graduate, acquaintance of mine, and fellow student of Liana Shanti’s – INVOLUNTARILY admitted to a MENTAL FACILITY.
Read the full story HERE.
