A new twist in the saga of Shelby Hewitt, high school imposter

Hewitt allegedly told Bernat and other Walden staff that she was so traumatized from being trafficked as a child that she couldn’t recall her real age and she needed to use aliases — such as Daniella — to hide from her abusers. Over time, she began using Daniella as her real name and portraying herself as virtually homeless.

But the story had yet another twist, as I reported in May. At some point in 2022, Hewitt ended up living in the two-bedroom Jamaica Plain condo Bernat shared with her longtime partner, John Smith. It remains unclear what the couple believed Hewitt’s real name and age to be when she moved in — they aren’t answering this and some other questions. The decision to take in Hewitt was unusual: It’s widely viewed as a breach of professional ethics for a therapist to house a former patient.

Bernat did more than provide a home in her role as a kind of foster mother. She also allegedly took steps to help enroll her former patient into three Boston schools — first under the name Daniella Herrera, age 16, then as Ellie Blake, age 13 — according to a school official. Bernat advocated for extensive special services for the new student at each of the schools.

This family-like arrangement collapsed spectacularly in June 2023 when a school principal grew suspicious about the purported child and her foster parents, and called police. As officers exposed the full scope of Hewitt’s hoax, Bernat expressed shock, telling law enforcement that she thought she’d been taking care of a needy child. During a police search of Bernat’s condo, a neighbor saw her weeping.

In the weeks since the publication of the story, I’ve talked to a number of people from Walden and Boston schools who question the degree of Bernat’s naivete.

Among the skeptical is a former Walden employee who says Hewitt’s 2022 admission as an apparent foster child was not the first time Bernat had met Hewitt. She says Hewitt had previously been admitted into the adult unit at Walden under her real name at least twice between 2018 and 2020, and that Bernat knew her then as Shelby Hewitt.

“In no way do I think [Bernat] was hosed,” says this former colleague. She adds Bernat would sometimes use Hewitt’s real name in staff meetings — ”She would definitely refer to her as Shelby” — but at other times used “Daniella,” a name staff then understood to be a pseudonym. This colleague also says Hewitt’s case became so challenging that Bernat agreed for a time to be her therapist.

(She, like most others interviewed for this story, asked to remain anonymous out of concern for being pulled into Hewitt’s pending criminal case and violating patient confidentiality.)

In addition, a former member of Walden’s clinical treatment team says Bernat had a reputation as a highly rational, cool-headed administrator. “I don’t think of her as being taken,” she says. Bernat worked with many patients with personality disorders, who can be prone to tall tales and deception, she continues. “Becky was very savvy at seeing through that behavior.”

She and others associated with Walden say this is why questions about Bernat linger for them. Did Bernat’s compassion blind her to red flags in Hewitt’s ruse? Or, is she withholding something that explains why she made decisions that could endanger her career?

I also spoke with Liza Campiglio, a former patient at Walden who says she shared a room with Hewitt in the adult unit for about a month in the fall of 2019, when both women were in their late 20s. Campiglio says Hewitt went by her real name during that stay and that her emotional eruptions took up considerable staff time, including from Bernat, who oversaw both the adult and adolescent units.

Campiglio sent me a photo of a whiteboard at Walden from the time she and Hewitt were roommates. That board included shorthand versions of their last names: “Camp” for Campiglio and “Hewey” for Hewitt.

Campiglio believes that, no matter what age or name Hewitt used when she returned to Walden in 2022, Bernat must have recalled Hewitt’s real name and adult status from the 2019 stay. “There’s no way she didn’t recognize her,” Campiglio says.

Bernat has declined repeated requests for an interview through her lawyer, Connie Tran. But Tran responded to some of my written questions by email, suggesting Bernat and so many others had been victims of Hewitt’s elaborate ruse, believing that she was in fact an adolescent in desperate need of help.

“Hewitt utilized various fabricated personas,” including fake social workers, Tran wrote to me, “to deceive Walden, BPS and Rebecca into believing she was in fact a child who was legally in DCF’s custody.”

Tran added that the decision to enroll in the Boston schools was led by Hewitt. “Rebecca did not facilitate Shelby Hewitt’s enrollment into BPS; rather, Hewitt undertook this action independently,” she wrote.

Boston school officials contest that information, however, saying Bernat played a significant role. They say Bernat was present — either on Zoom or in person — to complete enrollment paperwork in August of 2022 for 16-year-old Daniella Herrera, and then in June 2023 for 13-year-old Ellie Blake. Officials say Bernat’s use of a second name in the school system, Ellie, raises questions about how certain she was about the truth of the first one, Daniella.

Bernat’s willingness to involve several schools — allegedly without revealing all she knew about the complexity of Hewitt’s case — was unfair to the many educators who went out of their way to help this student, says a staff member involved in Hewitt’s education. “It’s taking advantage of the system and people’s good will.”

Just a year ago, Bernat’s career seemed to be at new heights. After earning her master’s in social work at Simmons in 2002, she worked for a number of years at Germaine Lawrence, a now-closed residential mental health treatment facility in Arlington that focused on girls. Over the past decade, she rose rapidly through the ranks at Walden, and was most recently in charge of residential treatment services, which in 2020 had moved from Waltham to Dedham.

Bernat, now 49, is no longer employed at Walden, though company officials aren’t saying if she was fired. She still has a private practice office in Brookline as a licensed independent clinical social worker. The state board of social workers has initiated disciplinary action against her license after reviewing six complaints filed against it since her role in the Hewitt case emerged. A spokesman for the board will not say what the complaints allege.

Prosecutors had initially examined Bernat’s and Smith’s involvement in Hewitt’s case for potential crimes, and no criminal charges have been filed at this time, says a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

Hewitt, now 33, faces criminal fraud charges in a trial set for September, though plea deal discussions are underway. Some of her closest family and friends still struggle to understand why she would return to high school masquerading as a traumatized foster teen, even though in reality she had an advanced degree, a full-time job as a DCF social worker, a car, and a condo likely paid for by a windfall inheritance, said to be around $1 million, from her grandfather. (Hewitt’s lawyer, Timothy Flaherty, did not respond to my request to comment on his client’s relationship with Bernat.)

One former Walden patient, who asked to remain anonymous, sees tragedy in how the once-intertwined lives of Bernat and Hewitt have abruptly split. A restraining order prevents Hewitt from being near Bernat’s home. This former patient feels deeply sympathetic to Bernat, feeling she tried to do the right thing for Hewitt. “It’s heartbreaking,” she says.

But at least four former Walden colleagues who spoke with me cannot fathom why Bernat would jeopardize her career by getting so personally involved with a patient.

Given Hewitt’s inheritance, some have wondered if the couple was paid in some form to take Hewitt in. When asked that question, Bernat’s lawyer responded “Rebecca received no compensation for taking on a role that she perceived was legitimate.” John Smith, through his lawyer David Grimaldi, declined to answer questions. Both lawyers would not say if their clients were aware that Hewitt owned a car while living with them.

Citing Hewitt’s pending criminal case and patient confidentiality rules, Walden spokeswoman Katrine Strickland says the company will not answer questions about Hewitt’s multiple identities, or whether she used insurance under different names or paid out of pocket. Strickland also declined to say if Walden officials were aware that Bernat was housing Hewitt.

As I wrote last month, Boston Public Schools superintendent Mary Skipper made clear her belief that the hoax on the system was not just perpetuated by Hewitt alone. “We are deeply troubled that several adults would breach the trust of our school communities by posing as a student and their parents,” Skipper said in a statement.

Bernat’s attorney, however, sees her client as motivated entirely by altruism. “The story of Shelby Hewitt’s various fabricated identities is no doubt complex,” Tran wrote to me. “Rebecca Bernat, relying on all of the information presented to Walden Behavioral, earnestly believed the individual before her was an adolescent in need of help and a home.”

Patricia Wen can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @GlobePatty.