Sarah Corbett Lynch was working at the pool where she teaches swimming to kids recently when she noticed one of her young charges was struggling.
The young boy is in foster care, and had taken a shining to the 18-year-old teacher. Through conversations with his foster mom, Lynch learned the past few weeks had been particularly tough. So, she went to her locker, where she happened to have a copy of Noodle Loses Dad, the children’s book she wrote at age 13 to help other kids deal with the loss of a parent.
When she later saw the boy, she could tell that having a story about the hard experience he was going through had helped him not feel so alone. For Lynch, this small anecdote highlights what she’s all about.
“I want to help other kids and other young adults who have been through really difficult circumstances and want to see a light at the end of the tunnel,” she tells me over Zoom.
The difficult circumstances that Lynch and her family went through a decade ago are now ones that millions more people know about. In August 2015, Lynch’s stepmother, Molly Martens, and her father, Tom Martens, killed her father, Jason Corbett, in their North Carolina home. The long and shocking court case that followed is now the subject of a new Netflix documentary A Deadly American Marriage, which has rocketed up the streamer’s charts since being released on May 9.
When investigators arrived at the scene following Corbett’s killing, Molly and Tom Martens said the killing had been self-defense. They claimed that Corbett, a native of Ireland who had moved to his wife’s home country a few years prior, had been physically abusing his wife and had attempted to strangle her to death that night, before being found by his father-in-law.
However, doubts were raised at the trial over the brutality of the crime and lies Molly Martens had told about other aspects of their relationship, and in 2017, the pair were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to decades in prison. However, the convictions were overturned on appeal, and in 2023 Molly Martens pleaded no contest and her father pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. Ultimately, the pair were released from prison less than a year later.
While Sarah and her older brother Jack, then 8 and 10, initially corroborated Molly Martens’ claims of abuse, they later said they had been coached by their stepmother and she, in fact, had been subjecting them to coercive control and physical and emotional abuse. But while videos of their initial statements were played during the sentencing phase of the Martens’ plea deal in 2023, the siblings never got to refute them in court or share the reality of what they had experienced.
It was this feeling of being silenced that led the siblings to want to participate in the documentary and for Lynch to begin to work on a memoir about her experience. The book, A Time for Truth, was coincidentally released just a few months before the documentary.
“I believe that it was premeditated,” Lynch says of her dad’s killing. “I believe that Molly planned it and that Tom covered it up. I believe this because I lived in the house and I was there and all of the evidence points to premeditation. But that’s not the convictions they have and there’s nothing I can do about that. That was a really hard pill to swallow. But I think in everything that we’ve been through, a lesson we’ve learned is that you can’t get upset about things you can’t control…Then the book idea came to my head. That felt like I was getting justice for myself and for my dad and for my brother more than I ever could in a courtroom.”
Glamour spoke with Lynch about how she plans to help other survivors and what she wants the world to know about her dad.
Glamour: The documentary has now been out for two weeks, how are you feeling about the reception and how you were portrayed?
Sarah Corbett Lynch: I’ve been quite happy. I was happy with my contribution and it does feel like a certain amount of weight has been lifted off my shoulders that people are hearing us now and can understand it. I suppose people could ask “why did you do the documentary?” And it wasn’t really a choice. It felt like something we were compelled to do because we never knew what way it was going to go in America. I didn’t know whether they were going to get convictions or not. I wanted to get my dad’s truth and my truth on as many platforms as possible because my words have been twisted and used against me and my dad’s truth was twisted. It’s been really important for me and my family to have my dad remembered for the person that he was.
How did you and your family, including your paternal aunt and uncle who raised you, Tracey Corbett-Lynch and David Lynch, decide to participate?
There was a lot of discussion. We all sat down and spoke about it. At the end of the day we thought if we don’t partake in this, it’s going to go ahead anyways. We would like to have our voices heard in it. And there were two strong women producers who were extremely sensitive throughout the entire process, especially because of me and Jack’s ages. We were both minors when it started. I do believe that it shows our characters in the way that we are.
Have you seen the response online at all? How has navigating that been?
A few times I’ve been scrolling on TikTok or it comes up about someone’s opinion or what they’re thinking. But people have been quite sensitive as well about it. There was even one girl on TikTok saying that reminding people that me and Jack are on TikTok, so be careful of what you guys are saying. That’s really nice to see that people aren’t just looking at it as a true crime documentary. They’re actually seeing the people behind the story and that is what we wanted.
Are there any misconceptions about the case you’d like to clear up?
I think a lot of people forget that anyone can be abused and anyone could be an abuser. My dad was abused, I was abused, and Jack was abused by a woman. It’s really important for people to understand that nobody, whether their gender, age, race, sexuality, nobody should be able to affect your life negatively. Nobody should be able to control you. Nobody should be able to force you to do these things that you want to do.
I think a lot of people get confused about me and Jack’s evidence that we gave to social workers and ask us, “oh, well, how did they coach you in three days?” But Molly had been in my ear since I was four years old. When I was six, Molly started telling me that my dad killed my birth mom. She had taught me how to vomit and how to shoplift, and I thought those things were okay. And yes, she did sit me down before I went into these interviews and told me if I didn’t say this, I didn’t say this, that I’d never see her again and that I’d be taken away and I’d be separated from Jack. But I knew what to say before she even told me because someone I loved and trusted was telling me to lie about someone else I loved and trusted and they were calling it the truth.
What are some things that you wish viewers could know that they didn’t see in the documentary?
I think the only way to answer that would be to read A Time For Truth, because there’s so much evidence out there. When I think about it, it just makes me so upset that it was never heard in court. I think that’s probably the hardest thing about writing the book was seeing all of the evidence put together and asking how are the Martens’ walking free right now? So I would love it if people read the book and actually tried to understand the facts because there’s nothing that I say or that Tracey says in her book My Brother Jason that isn’t backed up by facts and by evidence.
Your book details a lot more of your experience of the coercive control and abuse you dealt with while living with Molly in North Carolina. You write that you watched her shoplift as a child, saw her physically abuse your brother, and began making yourself throw up due to pressure she placed on you. How did you decide to share these personal and painful experiences?
It was difficult. What I thought about was that other girl or that other kid or that other woman who is experiencing that. They could connect and be like, “okay, I’m not the only one.” I think it’s important to note that there’s so many people out there that are experiencing really difficult times and challenges right now, and those are the people that I want to understand aren’t alone. There’s always somebody out there that’s willing to help you.
I think it’s important that people understand the signs of coercive control, because sometimes you don’t know you’re in it until it’s happened or you don’t know how bad it is until something extremely bad happens. I didn’t know what coercive control was until about three years ago, and it was only through therapy that I realized that’s what was happening to me for so long. And I think in the book, vomiting, shoplifting and everything in it shows people the actual true picture of all of the different mind games that were happening between all of us. And it was like we were all living under this roof, but had completely different lives.
That must have been really challenging to unspool as well.
Yeah. I think writing the book was also a type of therapy for me. I remember my dad, David, asked me, “How do you feel about writing the book?” And my first answer was, “I’ve cried a lot less because I got to take all of the worst things that’s happened to me in my life, put them into one funnel and look at it and write it and rewrite it and read it and write it and rewrite it.” And it gave me a chance to actually forgive that little girl for saying those things. And to say that I’m very proud of her and I hope she’s proud of me.
You also share many lovely memories of your dad in the book. I loved one anecdote you shared of going for a walk in Ireland, and getting stuck in the rain and finding a cave to hide out in. And then, after his death when you moved home, you coincidentally found yourself in the same cave.
My dad was everything and it was the same for Jack. That memory is my favorite memory of my dad, my most favorite. I was in Spanish Point, where that happened, only a few days ago with my friends, and I remember it was my birth mom’s birthday. And I remember thinking to myself, “I actually wouldn’t be anywhere else if my parents were alive, I would be here with them.” And it was a really nice feeling. I knew that I was where I belonged, this is where I should be.
For so long, because I moved so much growing up, I never felt like I belonged here until I was in the care of Tracey and David. And I love that people are really enjoying my dad’s memories. I think people really relate to them.
So many children, unfortunately, experience abuse or trauma at home. What would you say to encourage them?
I think as a kid who’s giving evidence and talking to police, it’s really hard because no one believes you. What I’ve learned is that you have to know the truth and be okay with that. I also think that you have a voice, no matter how many people tell you, you can’t. You’re too young. I wasn’t allowed to give evidence. I wasn’t allowed to be a character witness. I wasn’t allowed to testify. I was told that I probably shouldn’t do the book because what would people say?
But I believed I knew the truth. I was there and I wanted people to hear me. And that’s why I chose to do the audiobook as well, because I wanted people to actually hear me say all of those things. I think a lot of people have come back to say that I was really glad that it was you who was actually speaking. They felt like they were actually talking to me. And it was really important to me that people understand that it wasn’t one night in August, 2015, it was years and years.
You write in the book about how Molly, a former competitive swimmer, coached you and your brother in swimming and pressured you to succeed to the point where you hated the sport. But now, you’re a swim instructor and a certified diver, and want to pursue diving full time post college as a career. How did you repair your relationship with swimming?
I had a very, I want to say, toxic relationship with swimming. Molly was obsessive. She had me in the gym at six years of age. She had me on a diet. It got to a stage where I was making myself sick to stay skinny at the age of seven, and I hated it. I hated swimming so much because Jack was really, really good at it and he was so talented and came easy to him. And Molly just bullied me every time I did bad or every time I didn’t win
I came back to Ireland and in our school system you have to do swimming lessons. And so I went to swimming lessons and they were shocked because I was really good compared to most of the kids in my class, and I liked that. I love being in the water. I just didn’t like when people asked me to freestyle or…I just didn’t like the competitiveness of it. Then I started working in the pool and a few of my friends were doing their lifeguard course. So I was like, I’ll do mine. And I made really good friends in it, so I was like, okay, I want to do my swim teacher’s course.
Now, I don’t think there’s been a day in, I think about four weeks that I haven’t been in the water. I find swimming and diving, it’s my therapy. I go under the water. I can’t bring my phone, can’t bring work emails, can’t bring friend drama. I can’t bring anything other than myself and the only person I have to worry about is myself unless I’m teaching. It’s just about you, that big tank on your back and looking at a load of fish.
If you could tell viewers of the documentary anything that they should take away from your story or how you’re doing now, what is something that you would share?
I would definitely like to share how appreciative I am for all the lovely messages. I’ve been inundated the last few weeks and I’ve been trying to get back to everybody. I really am trying my best.
I think that it is a saying that’s probably way overused, but it’s so true. There always is light at the end of the tunnel and you have a voice. I found mine and there’s absolutely nothing stopping anybody from finding theirs.
The post Sarah Corbett Lynch of A Deadly American Marriage Is Finding Her Voice—and Won’t Stop Using It appeared first on Glamour.
