A psychologist has weighed in on ‘Cyber Munchausen-by-proxy’ after a recent Netflix doc suggested it caused a Mum to send death threats to her daughter in a bizarre catfish incident.
The case was covered in Netflix’s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish which covered Lauryn Licari receiving a series of anonymous and hateful messages over the course of 22 months.
Eventually, it was revealed that Lauryn’s mother Kendra had been the one to be secretly sending the messages.
This reveal tore apart her family as shown in body cam footage of the local sheriff revealing the news to Lauryn and her family.
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A question that the documentary mostly fails to answer however is why Kendra did this.
Many of the messages she sent her daughter were vile, including death threats, calls to kill herself, and body shaming comments that are upsetting to read as a casual viewer, let alone receive as a 13 year old girl.
In the documentary, Kendra claims that the original text messages her daughter received were not sent by her but that she did eventually start sending the messages in hope that Lauryn would reveal a hint as to who was messaging her.
This bizarre logic does not seem to track, and multiple people with expert knowledge of the case suggested it may be a form of ‘Cyber Munchausen-by-proxy’.
LADbible spoke exclusively to Danielle Haig, the Chief Psychologist at DH Consulting, to discuss the case.
In addition to providing possible reasons why Kendra used her daughter’s nickname ‘Lo’ in the texts, Danielle weighed in on the possibility that she may have ‘Cyber Munchausen-by-proxy’.
She said: “The idea of 'Cyber Munchausen-by-proxy' is a useful lens. Traditionally, Munchausen-by-proxy involves a caregiver fabricating illness in another to secure attention, control, or closeness.
“Translated into an online setting, creating crisis or drama digitally can serve a similar function ie keeping someone dependent or emotionally bound.”
She went on to finally add: “In the documentary’s portrayal, if the mother was engineering scenarios to draw her daughter in, it would fit that pattern: a distorted attempt to manage attachment and soothe a fear of separation.”
Speaking about this in the documentary, the former superintendent of Beal City district, where Lauryn went to school, was the first to suggest this as a possible reasoning.
He said: “She wanted her daughter to need her in such a way that she was willing to hurt her.
“This is the way she chose to do that, versus physically trying to make her ill, which is typical Munchausen’s behaviour.”
The documentary has seen rave reviews but many slammed the failure to more thoroughly investigate Kendra’s infatuation with Lauryn’s boyfriend Owen, who she also sent messages to.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Documentaries, Mental Health, Netflix, TV, TV and Film, True Crime
Michael Slavin