The California mother who staged her own kidnapping in 2016 is speaking out for the first time since her disappearance nine years ago in a new documentary series.

Sherri Papini, dubbed “the perfect wife,” pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges related to faking her own kidnapping six years prior, but the California mom of two is insisting that she was, indeed, kidnapped, tortured and branded in the 2016 incident that prosecutors said she staged herself.

“Haven’t you ever lied? And then, has the lie been blown up?” Papini asks in a trailer for the new docuseries, “Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie.”

“I went missing in 2016, was gone for 22 days. I was tortured, I was branded, I was chained to a wall. All that is true. I did keep some secrets from you, though,” she says in the trailer.

Papini, now 42, pleaded guilty in April to two of the 35 total counts she was charged with — for engaging in mail fraud and making false statements to a federal office, prosecutors said. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison for her costly scheme. 

Sherri Papini departs a child custody hearing in Redding, California, on Friday, March 21, 2025. Papini previously served 18 months in federal prison for faking her own kidnapping in 2016. (Derek Shook for Fox News Digital)

She is currently engaged in a legal battle with her ex-husband for visitation rights with their two children. 

In addition to her sentence, Papini agreed to restitution payments of up to $300,000. More specifically, she was ordered to pay nearly $149,000 to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, at least $127,568 to the Social Security Administration, $30,694 to the California Victims Compensation Board and more than $2,500 to the FBI, according to court papers.