Unknown Caller.

 This blog contains a spoiler about the identity of the Unknown Number. I think everybody knows, but just in case....

                                               

Like many people, I sat and watched Unknown Number: The High School Catfish – A Chilling Dive into Digital Deceit. The Netflix documentary explores a disturbing case of cyberbullying in a small Michigan town, with a terrible sense of unease.

Lauryn Licari is a teenage girl who, along with her boyfriend Owen McKenny, became the target of relentless harassment via text messages from the ‘unknown caller’.

In October 2020, during preparation for a Halloween party, Lauryn and Owen start receiving strange texts. They are in the realm of; he’s going to split up with you, he’s with me now and other such statements that could be put down to teenage hormones and immaturity.

Then the messages escalate in frequency and intensity. Twelve months later the couple were receiving up to 50 texts a day, and they are now sexually explicit, manipulative and suggesting self-harm. The unknown caller knew times, dates, nicknames, events… even the basketball scores of the school team.

So, the sender was somebody close to them.

The documentary follows the investigation as Lauryn and Owen’s families start with the school, then the Sheriff’s Office and eventually the FBI. It was the FBI who traced the IP address behind the anonymous number.

It was Lauryn’s own mother, Kendra Licari.

It was a young criminology student who asked me to watch it, so we could discuss the case.

Like most people I had many, many questions.

The first question I had ‘was when Kendra was jailed, was she also given treatment?’  Her actions to her daughter were vile in the extreme, but they were also, I feel the actions of a deeply, deeply troubled soul. (I've read that she has been given counselling, and that her mental health issues were not explored in the documentary as fully as they could have been.)

The student was thinking about Munchausen’s by proxy.

I have only seen the documentary, which is a snapshot on what was a very complex situation, so it’d be unfair to comment.

But, as a writer, I like to think of the protagonist and the antagonist being on opposite sides of a fine line. In those circumstances, what would Person A do? What other pressures would have to be bought to bear for Person A to act as Kendra did?

Kendra gave a couple of reasons/ excuses as to why she did what she did, and why she did it for so long.

If we start swimming in the realms of fiction, how could a writer write a character and justify such behaviour to the reader. And make the reader believe that in those circumstances, who knows that I would do.

 

One story;

The youth and the long-term relationship of the daughter and her boyfriend. Thinking that through, I know of one woman who would be alive now if her mother had intercepted the relationship when it started at school and split them up. A teenager who is persistently warned that the boyfriend is no good? Warning her will only drive the couple further together. So, the unknown caller approach might be a painful and disturbing one, but it might work. The couple split up. Daughter escapes a lifetime of domestic violence; she escapes with her life.

( I’ll re-state here that this is my fictional brain talking, based on a case of my personal knowledge.  The young man in the documentary, was totally charming.)

 

Second Story

What life has mum had? What relationship did mum have with her own mother? Maybe mum wants to be a better mum without the tools and experience of what good motherhood is. Maybe she finds that causing a little friction between her young teenage daughter, and her daughter’s boyfriend, drives the daughter back into her mother’s arms. They have late night chats over cocoa, the mum takes the daughter's corner, defends her against the constant barrage of abusive texts. Mum becomes her daughter’s champion, her friend, the only one she can trust, maybe in a way that her own mother never did. If nobody ever came to defend her, mum might make sure that she can defend her daughter. If nothing happens that requires such defence, well she’ll just create it.

Third Story

Some trauma that the mum went through, that she wanted the daughter to avoid at all costs. Keeping her close by, keeping her a child, keeping her terrified of the big wild world.

 

The quote "In love we feel that we are greater than we know" is attributed to William Wordsworth. I think it is supposed to reflect that through love we can achieve a deeper understanding of yourself.

Or could it mean that love can blindside people into thinking that if their actions are done through love, they are  acceptable.

I have no real insight into why Kendra did what she did.

It’s a fascinating as a basis for discussion. But who are we to judge on a 90-minute documentary, filmed to be entertainment?