Topics: Real Life, True Life, Crime, Netflix, Documentaries, TV And Film, Parenting
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
Last Friday (29 August), a brand-new documentary chronicling a real-life cyberbullying case that rocked the small community of Beal City, Michigan, finally landed on Netflix.
Back in October 2020, 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her then-boyfriend Owen began receiving suspicious texts from an unknown number and, after a pause, the messages resumed in September 2021.
Things soon evolved into a daily barrage of threats and vile insults over the next 15 months, with the very unsettling messages containing information that only someone close to Lauryn could have known which is when concerned parents and school officials turned to law enforcement for help.
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An investigation led by Isabella County Sheriff Mike Main initially focused on Lauryn and Owen’s classmates and friends, casting suspicion throughout their school and fracturing relationships.
However, when those efforts stalled, Bradley Peter, a police officer, stepped in as liaison to the FBI, only to discover that the perpetrator was her own 'obsessed' mother, Kendra Licari.
And now, an update has been given on the relationship between Lauryn, now 18, and her mother, Kendra.
In December 2022, Kendra was arrested and charged with multiple counts of stalking and using a computer to commit a crime. She pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and was sentenced to 19 months to 5 years in prison and has since been released from prison on August 8, 2024.
At the time filming on Unknown Number concluded, the mother said she still wanted to be a part of her daughter’s life.
Netflix users will know that Kendra actually participated in the documentary, with director Skye Borgman telling Tudum: "She’s remorseful that she has severely altered her relationship with her daughter in most likely a negative way.
"I mean, will they have a relationship? Will they get through this? I don’t know. There will probably be some kind of relationship. Will it be the same? Absolutely not. There’s no way it can be the same."
After her mother was initially sentenced, Lauryn said she loved her and wanted her back in her life. But when filming the coumentary came around a year later, Borgman recalled that the teen wanted to 'approach the relationship with more caution'.
“She’s done a lot of pretty critical thinking, especially between that time and now … These years are such critical years for young people”, he said. “Everybody else can hate Kendra. I don’t think Lauryn can, right? It’s your mom. I mean, how do you navigate that? It’s really uncharted waters.”
Discussing the reason as to why Kendra tormented her daughter for all those years, Borgman continued: "I don’t know that she really knows why she did it."
"She does mention in the documentary an assault that happened [to her] when she was right around Lauryn’s age," the director added. "She talks about how scary that was for her to see her only child, her little girl, growing up, and that’s what she really relates to and that’s what she believes led her to sending these text messages and trying to keep Lauryn close."
Meanwhile, Isabella County prosecutor David Barberi believes that Kendra's behaviour could be a kind of cyber Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy, also known as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA) is a mental illness and a form of child abuse, where the caretaker of a child, most often a mother, exaggerates or deliberately causes symptoms of illness in the child.
However, in this case, of course, it was slightly different as it was cyberbullying rather than being illness-related, and as far as we know, Kendra has not actually been diagnosed.
"To give it any sort of medical foundation is a little bit problematic. … But I think that there are elements about Munchausen by proxy - about harming someone to keep them close - that definitely existed," Borgman added.
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is currently available to stream on Netflix.
