Hidden True Crime - Kendra Licari Unmasked | The DARK Psychology of Netflix's Unknown Number

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

**SPOILER ALERT** In this episode, we take a deep dive into the complex psychological portrait of Kendra Licari, the Michigan mother whose anonymous text-based cyberbullying of her own daughter, Lauryn, and Lauryn’s ex-boyfriend, Owen, shook communities when exposed in Unknown Number: The High School Catfish. To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to http://nakedwines.com/HIDDEN and use code HIDDEN for both the code AND PASSWORD. About Hidden True Crime: What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, everyone. My name is Lauren Matthias, and this is Dr. John Matthias, my co-host, of hit and chew crime. Also a criminal psychologist. And I am a former broadcast reporter. Still a journalist. Once a journalist, always a journalist. And we're here to break down what all of you have been requesting us to do. I mean, we're talking requests after request after request every day, multiple requests a day for us to break down the unknown caller, the latest Netflix documentary that has all of our heads spinning by our friend, Sky Borgman. Sky Borgman directed it. Well done, Sky. It's left us all kind of crazy. Spoiler alert. If you have not watched this

documentary and you don't want to know how it ends, go watch it, come back and here we are. So there will be some spoilers in this episode. And with that, I also want to say, babe, you look very dapper tonight. I can also say that because not only are you my co-host and a criminal psychologist, you're also my husband. So don't worry, everyone. I can say that to you. You look pretty dapper yourself.

Look at the, have I seen that necklace? I don't think I've seen that necklace. It's a sweater. Oh, it's a sweater. Okay. I haven't seen. I haven't seen the sweater then. Yeah.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. There was clearly some competition for me tonight with you looking so nice. So thank you. Yeah. And so that's exactly what Kendra experienced. Kendra Likari. Kendall, yeah.

That's exactly one of the issues that Kendra Likari has. Contraged with. And struggled with, right, in explaining this, this particular crime. Certainly that's something we need to consider. But we'll get there. We won't get there right away. I don't even know where we start.

Do we start with the spoiler? Do you want to start with the spoiler or do you want me to? Why don't you start with the spoilers since people can take it out on you? All right. Fair enough. So this movie is about a high school. school cyber bully who cyber bullied a girl, Lauren, relentlessly, not me, another Lauren, Lauren with a Y, relentlessly, as well as her boyfriend, Owen, and other classmates for

months and months and months asking, suggesting they self-harm, saying the most horrendous things you can imagine, go watch the movie to understand all these friend of things. Dr. John will get into this. The principal got involved, the school got involved, police got involved, and then the FBI got involved because it was this bad. And who was it behind the cyberbullying, Lauren's own mother, Kendra. There's your spoiler. And everybody's saying, help us understand Kendra. Why would a mother do this? So I'm going to let you take it away from there.

Right. So there's a lot to unpack here. I think that is the fundamental question that everyone is asking us. And it's actually the fundamental question that the movie asks. So it's interesting that after Kendra's identity is revealed as the cyberstalker, nobody can believe it. People's first response to that is, I don't believe it. So Jill, Jill McKinney, who's Owens. mother, she says, I don't think it's her. Everybody seems to be in denial. And the reason they're in denial is because Kendra has been a high school coach for Lauren on multiple teams. She helps out at school a lot. Like, at least on the surface, she presents as someone who doesn't seem to have a vicious bone in her body, or at least someone who seems to be helpful and interested in helping her daughter and and helping the school. So she doesn't seem to be particularly antisocial, right? She doesn't seem to fit the profile of someone who might engage in this type of malicious

activity. So without a doubt, that's the big question. The question is, why does Kendra Lakari, who is Lauren Licari's mother, why does she engage in this type of really malicious behavior towards her own daughter? Her own daughter, her own daughter. And so the first half of this documentary raises the question of who. This first half of this documentary is a who done it. And then the second half becomes a why done it in terms of Sky is kind of trying to,

she tries to tease out. Sky Borgman, the director, tries to tease out. out possible explanations for why this crime, it's felony. It turns out to be there's two counts of stalking a minor that she's found guilty of, or she actually takes a plea deal, and she spends roughly a year and a half to two years in prison for that crime. So it's interesting. We'll talk about some of the theories.

You know, one of the more interesting theories is put forth in the second half of the documentary by the principal who essentially says he believes it's a case of cyber Moonschhausens. So just to correct that particular diagnosis, by the way, technically, Moon Chousins by proxy is no longer a diagnosis. in the DSM, it would, technically, it would be factitious disorder imposed upon another. So I guess this would be cyber factitious disorder imposed upon another, according to him. And, you know, that's an interesting theory because I do, I definitely. It's where my mind went.

Yeah. Okay. It's an interesting theory because clearly there's an intention-seeking component to this. and if you listen to Melissa Perry, who is a cousin, one of Kendra's cousins, talk about Kendra when she was younger. One of the things she says about Kendra is she's very attention-seeking. In fact, she's talking to the interviewer, and she says, you know, if we had Kendra in the room,

if I was doing this interview and we had Kendra in the room right now, she would be dancing right next to it. she would be dancing over there trying to get her attention because she couldn't handle the fact that you're interviewing me and not her, right? That she's not the center of attention. So Melissa Perry confirms that there's an attention seeking component. So that that particular theory would essentially mean that Kendra's engaging in the cyber bullying to get more attention from her daughter, Lauren, so that she can become closer to Lauren. right, that she's trying to push her closer to her through this really vile, is vile tax and this really devious, I don't know, you know, this really malignant type behavior.

And it really is bad, by the way. The cyberstocking here is just, some of the tax are just unthinkable. I'll read some of them a little later. It's horrendous, yeah. It's why children would, why they would do the unthinkable. This is the type of cyberbulling we see in the news that has the most horrendous of results. It's horrendous what these texts say and when and how and what. So I think it's an interesting theory because it does appear that Kendra's very attention seeking.

And, you know, people in her past, her cousin says that. It seems like that's a really predominant feature of her personality. And so that makes sense to a degree that she's. engaging in the cyberbullying to upset her daughter, to traumatize her daughter so that her daughter turns to her for comfort and attention and actually would probably increase the dependency in the relationship, right? That makes a lot of sense. However, there's a big however here, and that is that Moonshausans by proxy or infectious disorder imposed upon another often involves a third party. The part that that's left out of that theory is that you,

Usually there's what we call triangulation going on, meaning that Moonschhausens occurs between typically a mother, a child, and hospital or health care professionals at the hospital, typically a doctor. So you actually, with classic Moonschhausens, you actually have three people involved in that relationship. So the reason the mother engages, in harming the child, let's say poisoning the child, if we're thinking about somebody like

Lori Vallow, Daybell, is to get attention primarily from the health care of the child. So by showing up over and over again and looking like the hero or the heroic caretaker that's saving the child from this false illness, the attention comes from the third party. It also might come from the child to some degree. But I think a lot of children that are victims of Moonschausen, they have a lot of mixed emotions about it. Because they sometimes sense that things aren't right,

that something is going on that doesn't fit, that somebody might be harming them. There's this intuition, I think. And so it's not like the children of Moonschhausens. Some do, some don't. But it's not like they will gravitate towards the abuser or attention all the time. They might do that to some degree. But one of their primary motives really is to get attention from a third party.

It's to get attention from health care providers to be seen as heroic. to them, maybe to a lesser degree to their own kids. But they know they're harming their kids, right? At some level, if you look at classic Moontausen's, the caregiver who's poisoning the children, let's say, for example, they know they're doing that. So it's hard for them to feel heroic towards their own kids when they know that they're harming their kids, right?

At some level, they know that's not heroic. But they can go into the health care providers and feel more heroic because they're not poisoning the doctors, right? Like to them, they can feel it's a different role for them to occupy. And it's a role where they're getting attention for being heroic to a third party. And I think that's going to set the stage for our analysis because there is a third party. There's a couple of third parties in here. In true crime, there's always a mystery to solve. But here is one mystery I don't have to wrestle with anymore.

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Yeah, so. I would like to take credit for the art on this one. Who needs canvas? when you have Sharpies. Here you go. Yeah. So that's my work. This is, yeah, this is, this is, I can't take credit for this. This is Lauren's handywork. And I just want to point out, I just want to point out how she spelled Kendra. You can see how Kendra's kind of off-centered.

And I asked her, it's kind of wonky. That was the term I used. Look at Kendra, it's wonky. I asked Lauren, I said, is it, did you spell Kendra like that because she is wonky? Or was that just a Was that just a mistake? I wasn't clear if she was like trying to mimic the psychological profile of Kendra. We'll say it's on purpose, but honestly,

I was just trying to squish it so that I could fit it in a circle because he said the females have to be in circles. And I thought, how do I get Kendra to be a circle and not so much an oval that was squishing it? But yeah, wonky.

It was totally on purpose, wonky. But yes. Yeah, it's wonky. So, you know, you inadvertently, by spelling Kendra a little wonky, you kind of mimicked her psychological profile. I did. So I'm talking about how Moon Chazza is by proxy often involves a third party. So I think if we want to really understand what's going on here, we need to bring in a third party.

So this isn't just a relationship between Kendra and Lauren. we might say that that's the primary relationship. But there's two other parties involved here. So you see Owen. Owen is the boyfriend. Owen's name is Owen McKinney. He meets Lauren in high school when they're 12. They start a relationship when they're 13.

And then somewhere at the age of 13, that's when these texts start. And when they start, Owen and Lauren have already been dating. They're in a relationship. They're well known at the school. People at the school refer to their relationship as the golden relationship, unquote. Some people refer to their relationship as the forever relationship. So people at the high school are seeing this as a very healthy, positive relationship. They see this as a relationship that they apparently think is going to last and have.

has a lot of stain power. So that's important because Owen is going to play a big role in this. When we talk about, with Moon Townsend's by proxy, when I talk about health care providers kind of being the third wheel or the third leg of the triangle, Owen becomes that part of this triangle. Okay. So if, and I'll explain all this, but, but, so we have to, you, you, you can see attention seeking behavior for sure in terms of getting Lauren to maybe,

move closer to Kendra through the bullying. But let's actually look at some of the history of this. And so let's, and I'll explain the chart in a little more detail in a little bit. For our purposes, however, if you look at Lauren and Owen, so the circle around Lauren means that's for females, the box, the square, that's males.

The green lines refer to a, relationship that's overly close. Or psychologists or mental health providers, family therapists, typically, we use the term enmeshed. A meshed means there's some degree of dependency. There's some degree of a relationship that's overly close. So the green lines, the green lines in this diagram represent what I would describe as overly close and over a local relationship, that there's a lot of dependency going on.

I drew a circle. So there's two circles. There's Lauren and Owen, so I drew the, is it red or orange? I drew the, I had you draw the orange. Orange. That one's orange. I had you draw the orange circle around them. That means there's an alliance there. That means those two are aligned in some sense, kind of aligned against the world. Let's think of it that way. And then I drew a, I had you draw the blue circle around Kendra and Lauren showing that at least for Kendra and probably for Lauren too, that they too have a bit of alliance. those they two kind of see their relationship is set apart so another interesting thing about this diagram is you can see sean up there in the right Sean's kind of Sean's kind of the lone wolf right he's there's not a lot a lot of lines going on with Sean like he's sort of disconnected from this whole fiasco and um and I'll explain the importance of that too you can see that between Kendra and Sean there's a red squiggly line the red line means there's conflict.

Okay. The red line means that there's probably some conflict. There's probably some hostility in the relationship. It means that the relationship isn't necessarily super close. And I'm speculating on that, by the way. And I'll talk about more why I think that's the case. I could be wrong. So let me just point out quickly.

Let me give you a disclaimer here, which is I have limited information about this family and about all of these individuals. I would need to interview them, and I would need to learn a lot more about these families to give you a really in-depth analysis. So this is speculative. There's a lot of uncertainty here. I'm just trying to develop some hypotheses

based on my knowledge in this field, based on research in this field, based upon what mental health providers would more than likely kind of see in this situation. But it is speculative. So you have this alliance between Lauren and Owen and between Kendra and Lauren. And let's start with, I'm going to start with, so in Halloween of October of 2020, there's a party. There's a high school party.

And Lauren and Owen are dating at this point. And that's when these texts start. So I'm going to read one of the. This is one of the first texts. This is the first text that occurred. So I think it was after the party, maybe the day after the party. That's when all this begins. That's when the cyber bullying and stocking begins.

Here's the first text. Owen is breaking up with you. It's obvious he wants me. So there are other texts around that. Here's another text from that time. Quote, you are the ugliest person I have ever seen. there's a lot of text in here. So this goes on for a year and a half.

There's a lot of texts about physical appearance, by the way. There's so many texts about physical appearance. So we're going to learn or we can infer from that that physical appearance is a big part of this story. Right. And we'll get to that too. But the reason I'm going to read some of these initial texts is because it's really going to set the storyline. It's really going to give us the narrative. So the first text that's sent is about Owen.

right it's not about Lauren it's not about the relationship we Kendra and Lauren it's about Owen Owen is breaking up with you it's obvious he wants me then the text stop for almost 11 months they're picked they start up again in 2020 September of 2021 here's one of the first messages that shows up again preparing for the end of the golden relationship question mark Owen loves me and I will always be the girl he loves. That's where it picks up in September of 2021. So, right? So if you look at some of these first texts,

the absolute first text in October of 2020 and then the text later in September of 2021, those are about Owen. And those are about the relationship. And so this person who we know is Kendra is basically saying that, you know, she says, she actually says early on in this documentary that one of her goals was to break up the relationship.

But we don't know, we clearly don't know at this point who this is, and so, but we know that the person perceives Owen as being in love with them and she wants this relationship to end. Now, these messages, this cyberbullying becomes so bad that Owen essentially can't take it and it creates a lot of conflict in their relationship, Lauren and Owen's relationship,

and they break up. So here's another component to this story. Another important, so we learned from these initial texts that Owen is a key component of this. We know that the person sending the message is Kendra has this apparent infatuation with Owen. And then, as if that's not enough evidence,

much later in this story, Owen starts dating someone from another part of Michigan. Right. And as in Lauren is long gone. Lauren. They've been broken up for years and he's starting to date another girl from another part of the state. So he starts dating someone else from another part of the state. And lo and behold,

very early on the relationship, this girl's mother receives a text message from the same number that from the same person that's been stalking Owen and Lauren and I don't have the texts. You can see them in the documentary. I think they show a few of them.

But essentially, Kendra says to the mother, starts threatening Owen and saying the same type of things, that Owen needs to leave the relationship because she doesn't love him, that the girlfriend doesn't love him and that she's the right person for him. So, right, so now we're getting to the point where this has nothing to do with Lauren. Yeah. Now we're getting to the point where you can, if you're going to go with this theory that this is

somehow Moochelsen's by proxy, this shatters that theory. Because here we are a year and a half later, Owens moved on for quite some time. He's in a new relationship. And here we have Kendra trying to ruin that relationship as well. And showing the same feelings for Owen. Yeah, has nothing to do with Lauren. Right, exactly. And so that really starts moving us away from this whole Moonshausel

by proxy theory because right that theory is based on the fact that the bullying occurs with Lauren to bring Lauren closer to Kendra but now we're seeing that in fact that's not the case it is partially the case it was the case but here we have the stalker Kendra essentially trying to pursue Owen trying to ruin his relationship without any impact on Lauren Yeah. And we later on in this documentary, again, more spoiler alerts. I guess our whole show is a spoiler alert. But Jill, Jill McKinney, who's Owen's mother, she says, essentially, that she believed that Kendra was obsessed with Owen, that he wanted a relationship with Owen.

and that he, that even after they broke up, that Kendra would flirt with Owen, that she would text with Owen. Again, this is after the breakup. That you ready for this? That she, Kendra, would attend all of his sporting events. Even though, again, even though Lauren is not in a relationship with him, he notices this family, the McKinney's notice,

that Kendra is attending all his sporting events. You need some red flags on this chart. I could have added those if you'd asked. Yeah. So, and also Owen, by the way. So Owen, Owen is noticing this too, by the way. So here's, Owen says, Owen says in the documentary, you know,

this was, he believed that Kendra was attracted to him. He said she was attracted to me. And then he said, not in the same sentence, but he said she was attracted to me. It was too weird. Like even Hohen is like picking up on the fact that this is kind of weird, right? Like what is going on here? So the question, obviously, I'm sure this is the question everyone's going to ask.

Let's go back to the chart really quickly. So notice I have the three lines between Kendra. and Owen. Yes. So the three lines, as I said earlier, that kind of represents a relationship where there's dependency or overly close or a meshment. Since Kendra and Owen didn't really have a relationship, obviously, this represents Kendra's fantasy.

This is a fantasy that Kendra's having about being close with Owen, about being in a relationship with them. So the three lines here essentially are the. the same lines I would draw between Lauren and Owen, meaning that when Lauren and Owen first stating, it was first started dating, it was first love. They were really close, right? Like any first love, they were kind of a match. They were inseparable. They were the golden couple. So that makes sense for them. With Kendra and Lauren, you see the three lines. They too were very close. They too were very amassed. They too had some dependency. How do I know that? Because after

Lauren learns that her mother is the stalker, she basically says, I don't believe it. And she needs her still desperately. Right. She says this, so she says, in reflecting on this issue, she says, why would my mom do the, quote, why would my mom do this? Did she really actually do this, question mark? I can't believe it. Honestly, I'm just really confused.

Right. So Lauren struggles with this. I know people are saying, well, how can Lauren? Lauren still feel close to her mother. And that's one of the things you see here. How could she still feel so connected to her mother in spite of what her mother did? And the answer is those three lines explain it, that there's some ammeshment there. There's been a meshment from early on with Lauren.

That in many ways, Kendra has developed some dependency on Lauren and vice versa. Let's say it's codependency. And so when you have that type of codependency, it's very hard. to shake it. It's very hard to, in spite of abuse, I see this all the time with children that are abused. They still feel connected to their abuser. And it's because many abusers go out of their way to develop overly dependent relationships so that the victims never leave them. Yeah. And so that's what's going on here. That's why Lauren will not turn on her mother. That's why Lauren wants to, she says, I need my mother. Right. And you see that with a lot of victims

abuse. They still feel that connection in spite of the fact that they've been horribly abused, they still feel that connection. It's so hard to shake. And so I, based upon that, I think it's fair to say that you have this dependency between Kendra and Lauren. With Owen, however, that dependency exists in fantasy. And so let's try to figure out why Owen. Right? Let's try to figure out why Owen? What is this obsession with Owen?

And that's, let's go back. Okay, so you, thank you, you pull the chart up. So let's get into family dynamics. So we don't know a, I don't know a huge amount of family dynamics, but there's some nuggets in this film that really help us understand. some of the dynamics that are going on in the Lakari family. We know that obviously Lauren is an only child, so that's important, right, that Lauren is going to get a lot of attention no matter what.

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We learn that, notice I have the red line between Kendra and Sean, meaning conflict. So here's a little nugget that if you're paying attention to this documentary, you'll pick up, that after Sean learns that it's Kendra. who is the stalker, he says, quote, he asked, first of all, he asked Kendra to leave. He's like, you got to leave this house. You got to leave this house now. And Kerner's like, I can't leave. I need to be with Lauren. Also, the codependency, right? Like, right? The police just revealed to her daughter, Lauren, that her mother was the stalker and she can't stop hugging her. Right. Right. Like, a normal reaction, maybe a normal reaction in a healthy relationship. would be that the victim would probably run away and say, don't touch me.

Like, please get away from me. I hate you right now, right? Like, that's a normal reaction. Lauren is sitting in the chair. Her mother is hugging her. Her mother won't let her go. That's not a normal reaction. That's dependency.

But Sean, when Sean learns, he says, Kendra, you got to go. I can't do this anymore. You got to go. He says, quote, If I blow a gasket when they leave, meaning the police, if I blow a gasket when the police leave, I'll probably go to jail.

So that statement says a lot. I know it's one sentence in this documentary, and I could be completely wrong about it. But basically, what he's saying in that statement is there's obviously the implicit threat of violence. If they don't leave and I lose my cool, I'm going to go to jail because I'm, I'm probably going to hit you.

And let me qualify this because I don't know. I mean, that's what the statement says. And in fairness to Sean, there may not have been a history of conflict. I don't know. But I think making a statement like that kind of shows the potential for conflict. It shows that this is how he's solving this problem. Instead of trying to communicate with Kendra, he's sending her out of the house

and he's saying this in front of the police. Keep this in mind. He's saying this in front of the police. He's saying, I'm going to blow a gasket. When you guys leave, I'm going to blow a gasket and I'm going to go to jail because I'm going to get violent with her, right?

Like that's what he's saying, essentially. He's also upset that she found out that she lost her job and was lying about her job and all the debt collectors that were coming and not doing their house payment. But that was that was a little bit later. That's correct. And I'll talk about that too.

But my point is if you look at that one statement and you draw some inferences from it, and again, I'm qualifying this. Sean seems like a nice guy. You know, he doesn't see. But, you know, I don't, who know, I don't know what somebody's capable of, right? We all learn from hidden true crime that we don't know what's hidden in human beings. So, but I can say from the statement that what we can invest. What we can see from the statement is that his way of solving this problem is not through

emotional intelligence or normal channels of communication. It's his concern that he's going to blow gas and go to jail. It seems reasonable to say based on that. I'm not saying there's been any physical violence or domestic violence previously. I don't know that. Maybe there has been. I don't know for sure. But what I am saying is that there's conflict.

that I think that the way this couple is communicating and solving problems shows that some type of atypical communication is going on. It could be emotional. It could be right. It could be psychological. So I don't know if it's physical. He's certainly implying physical here. But the larger point is that I think this marriage is not ideal. And let's get back.

let's talk about what you just said. The 10 years, so Melissa Perry, the cousin also says, I think that Kendra's been lying. So she's lied about all her jobs. She hasn't had a job for several years. She's lied about, she gets up every day and pretends she has a job that she's, she doesn't have, she never had. So she's lying about everything.

She's lying about working, her employment. She's lying about finances, right? That too tells us a lot about this. family. That tells us about family dynamics and how they're communicating. For whatever reasons, and again, I don't know if, I don't know if this has anything to do with abuse, probably not, but let's just say, for whatever reasons, Kendra feels like she can't tell the truth to Sean. Yeah. Kendra feels that, that she can't communicate honestly with her husband. And that, too, tells me that this couple is not communicating well, this couple is not solving

problems well, right? There's a lot of inferences we can make about this marriage, that perhaps this marriage has not been ideal. Perhaps this marriage has had some problems. I think at a minimum, I can say that this, this is a family. This is a home that's filled with secrets and lies. It's filled, it's filled with no real open, authentic emotional communication. There's real, I think I can say there's There's probably a limited emotional connection going on in this marriage. And on that issue, by the way, earlier in this documentary, one of several of Lauren's closest friends say, quote, Lauren, so we're talking about Lauren here, not the couple, not the marriage, not the spouses. Quote, Lauren never showed any emotions. And she only talked about sports.

She was always, she was always, she was always to herself, meaning she always kept to herself. and she never, one of the friends said, she never talked to me about the most important things. She was a quiet person, right? That's interesting in the sense that that's consistent with the family dynamic where there's no communication, there's no emotional intelligence in this family, or I should say limited.

I don't want to say no, but her friends are also seeing someone who is quiet and isolated and struggles to communicate things that matter, to her, things that are emotional, things that are important. Lauren struggles with that. And that makes sense, right? If you think of the parents as setting the tone in that home and modeling good communication, good problem solving, good emotional intelligence, right?

That's not happening. So it's not only showing up in the marriage, it's also showing up in Lauren. Yeah. She showed very little emotion in her interviews. Yes. She had a very flat out. affect the entire time. I thought, you know, depression or, you know, just, yeah. Exactly. And so if we take all those pieces, and I know those aren't, that's, that's, we're just, I'm sure,

if I were to interview this family, I'd get a lot more information. So I'm just taking some little nuggets and I'm making inferences. And again, I'm going to qualify. I could be wrong here. but I think this is allowing me to develop some hypotheses about what's going on. So if we see this family, and especially the spouse is the couple, as having problems with communication, engaged in some conflict, now we can start making more sense of why Owen is pulled into this drama. So if you put up the diagram again, When you see typically when couple, a lot of times when couples have significant problems or conflict,

sometimes or oftentimes one member or both numbers of the couple will seek intimacy or perceived intimacy elsewhere. So that may be through another child like Lauren. it may be through someone outside of the family like Owen. And so what you have here is you have Lauren, so Lauren is maturing. She's reached puberty. She's dating. So you have this outsider Owen who's now in some ways coming into the family system.

He's coming in as an outsider, but he's still entering the family system. Lorne is an only child. And when that happens, Kendra, I believe, Kendra starts developing these fantasies about Owen. And she starts develop these fantasies about what a relationship with Owen would be like. And she starts because she's not connecting to Sean. And because maybe she hasn't connected to Sean for many years, she needs that fantasy to sustain the illusion that she is significant and that she matters and that she's a good spouse.

She's not working. She's lying about it, right? So she feels, in some way, she feels worthless. Here, by the way, is a text she sent. This is one of her texts early on to Lauren and Owen. She says, quote, you are worthless and you mean nothing and you never have. That's total projection. Fascinating.

Okay. Right. When she says, you are the ugliest person I have ever seen, projection. We'll get into that a little bit more. But like, one of the things about projection is that people that tend to have kind of, what I would say, limited interior lives, selves that are not particularly complex, they're more prone to projection because they don't really, they don't have the complexity to really sort out what matters to them.

And they're not able to kind of prioritize what's important. So a lot of times you'll just get, you'll get some part of them that they're unaware of that they'll just put out there onto other people to feel better about themselves. Interesting. So you have this conflict in the marriage. You have Owen coming into the family system. Owen, too, is like Lauren, he's now becoming, he's 13, he's in puberty, right? She sees him as a maturing male, right?

She starts seeing him as maybe a suitor of sorts or, like, and even though it's in fantasy, that's how she sees it. She sees Owen as a cure, as a panacea to all of her marital problems. She sees Owen as a way to get out of this conflict. In fact, Kenra has some insight. Or maybe even fantasize about youth, too, a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. Kendra says in the documentary, you know, Kendra actually has some moments of insight.

She says it was an escape. It took me out of my real life. Right? Like, yeah, that's true. Like, this relationship with Owen, it's based purely on fantasy. If you go back to the diagram, you'll see also, so with Kendra and Lauren, I also drew a red line, meaning that there's conflict. There's conflict between Kendra and Lauren in the sense that because she's fantasizing about Owen, she begins to see Lauren as competition. Okay.

She begins to as a threat. Right. She sees Lauren as a threat to Owen. If she's going to have Owen and she's going to live in this fantasy that Owen loves her and wants her and has to be with her, then obviously Kendra has to be removed. And Kendra has to be removed from the picture. Otherwise, I mean, Lauren has to be removed from the picture and their relationship has to fail so that then Kendra can perpetuate this fantasy of true love and right. And so you have, that's another really interesting part of this analysis is when you have those green lines and the red line next to each other, you have a situation where it's, it's, it's, it becomes like an approach avoidance situation. So the dependency. Kendra and Lauren have both the green lines and the red squiggly. So that's what we're referring to. Approach avoidance. Correct.

Yeah, and it's primarily, by the way, this is primarily one directional from Kendra to Lauren. Lauren and Kendra have this dependency with each other, the green lines. But Kendra has conflict with Lauren more in terms of seeing Owen as like a viable romantic partner. And a lot of these texts, by the way, I can't read. A lot of them were super sexual. Yeah, they were. And so if you want to see just how. much she's fantasizing about this romance, this perceived romance with Owen. You just have to, you know, the documentary plays a lot of them. I'm not going to repeat some here. I have written down, but I'm not going to repeat them.

It's sufficient to know that Owen is the object of Kendra's sexual desire. So this isn't just a fantasy about resolving all of her marital problems. finding her happy ever after. This is more than that. This is also that she desires him sexually. Wow. You have this sexual component. And so in that sense, Lauren becomes this competition. Wow. And I think in order to understand this dynamic, I think we need to back up a little bit and talk about talk about some defense mechanisms. So a defense mechanism is a defense mechanism is a way of coping with the world.

So that we can, it's a, it's a way to avoid reality to some extent so that we can, we can function in the world so we can cope with the world. So like one of the most common defense mechanisms that people would know is denial. That if, if something is overwhelming, difficult to hear or to process, we deny it. And so an example of that from this documentary is that when Kendra's confronted about how this all started, she said that she didn't start the texts. She tells police, well, I didn't start this.

So in October of 2020, she wants us to believe that somebody else began the text threads. There was someone else who started the text threads and started the stalking. And this is what she says, that she became involved. because she essentially wanted to flush out the stalker. She wanted to find the stalker's identity. That's why she picked up the text threat in September of 2021. That's her argument. That's denial.

How do I know that's denial? Because the reality is that the FBI has the evidence showing that the very first text ever sent came from Kendra. Okay. Kendra is unable to accept the fact that she started all of this. she started the stalking, right? So that's denial. That's her unwillingness and inability to accept the reality

that she was the stalker from start to finish. Yeah. And that she did this. There was no one else. But that's her story, right? So that's denial. But I think if we're really going to understand this a little deeper, we have to understand a defect offense mechanism called splitting.

And so if we think, one way to let me see it's kind of one way to think of splitting is splitting so let me I'm going to reference a psychoanalyst her name is Melanie Klein she's brilliant brilliant psychoanalyst now deceased I think she passed away in like 1960 but I would consider her to be one of the most influential post-freudean cyclanalysts and she had this theory that infants young infants less than two years old often less than one years old, they occupied different positions. You call them positions. And the first position was what you called the paranoid skezoid position.

And typically that would occur between like zero, between birth and like eight months. And if you think about a child being born, essentially that child in those very first days of existence, that child does not know how to make a distinction between themselves and the world. So everything to that child is that. It's what I would call all me, right? The child, everything in that child's existence is them. It's complete narcissism. Yeah.

Every sensation, every hunger pain, right? Everything that child experiences, they think is coming from them. Because they can't distinguish between themselves and the world. They can't make that separation. Okay. roughly at four months however, give or take, most children start developing the capacity. So by the way, that all be situation, oftentimes there are human beings that never separate. They never get away from that.

And that becomes the basis for later narcissism. So when you say, if somebody says, well, that person's acting like a baby, yeah, because they don't, they never. They never evolved. They never, right, they never evolved beyond that all-mee position where everything revolved around them, right? Every sensation, everything someone did for them. They all think it's them and they all think it's about them. But around four months or so, children start to develop, six months, they start

developing this capacity, distinguish me from not me. Okay. And one of the things children do when they do that is they split the world up. a lot of times they'll split the world up into all good and all bad. And so children, when children are fed and when they're cuddled and when they're happy, they'll think the world is good. But when they're not fed and when they're hungry and when their diapers need to change and they're uncomfortable and they're stressed, they'll start seeing all of the world as bad.

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One of the biggest problems the child has is survival and fear of, like the biggest fear of child has, and according to Melanie Klein, is this fear of abandonment or even annihilation. that the child believes at some level that if they don't have some capacity for good, that somehow all of their aggressive instincts and all of these parts of themselves that tend to be a little more, you know, harmful, let's say. Like, if a child doesn't get what it wants and it hits the caretaker, for example, the caregiver, there's this fear in the child that somehow that they'll disappear, that they won't survive. And so.

But the caretaker will disappear. the caretaker will disappear or that the baby will. Yes, that the caretaker, it's both. So splitting often involves projecting or seeing others in the environment is all good or all bad. When the child believes that the caregiver or the other person isn't giving them exactly what they need, then they try to create distance from that person. And the reason they do that is so they don't feel completely overwhelmed. So they don't feel overwhelmed by these bad aspects of the world.

And there's another component to that too. Not only are they trying not to feel overwhelmed by the bad, but they also don't want to destroy the good. But I think the important point with splitting is that the world gets divided up into good and bad, essentially, that there's this fragmentation. And it's a lot, so it's a lot easier for a child to see the world occurring in two bins rather than say 2,000 bins, right? Like the truth of the matter is that the world probably is more like 2,000 bins. But, you know, a six-month-old clearly isn't going to understand that, nor are they going to be able to process that.

So they make it really simple and everything is good and bad. and you have sort of this fragmentation and this compartmentalization going on. And so part of the paranoid skezoid position for Melanie Klein is that this is a period for the child of intense fear. There's a lack of integration of the good and the bad, right? The splitting by definition is that the good and the bad are separate, and that's how the child perceives the world.

And this is considered a very primitive defense mechanism. And the reason that's true is because ultimately when a child reaches the next stage for Klein, which is called the depressive position, the child is able to recognize the world and others is separate. And the child is eventually able to integrate the good and the bad elements, those good and the bad parts of themselves. And when the infant can do that, then presumably, so if we think of the good and bad, if we think of the good is love and we think of the bad as hate, ultimately the goal for the infant is to integrate kind of both these loving and hateful feelings

towards the same person or object simultaneously. Right. So we would call that maturity. It's not, you know, for a lot of us, that takes a lifetime. That doesn't occur at six months automatically. It probably doesn't occur for a couple of years. But you move from, you move from this splitting, And also, by the way, another common defense mechanism in those early years is projection.

So I mentioned projection earlier as projecting those parts, unwanted parts of ourselves on the other people, because we can't cope with them. We don't want to feel them. Right. That's going on too. So a child, think about a child that feels really angry. The child doesn't have the capacity to recognize that. The child knows that they feel bad.

The child knows that something isn't right physically in their body. right. And so when they feel their version of projection would be, if you feel angry, hit something, throw something, right? Scream. Throw a tantrum. So that's projection when you're a child. Unfortunately, for some human beings,

as we get older, and we're not able to integrate the loving and the hateful elements of relationships, and we're not able to kind of do that in a way where we see a caregiver as capable of love of incapable of, it's a strong word, but, you know, not meeting our needs.

If we can't integrate that, then that continues. And same thing with projection. If we're not somehow able to develop a little more complexity or, you know, or a richer interior life, we continue with projection for many, many years. into adulthood, or if not forever. And so that's where, by the way, that's the goal of therapy. The goal of therapy is to, or I should say some types of therapy. For some types of therapy, certainly one of the goals is to develop some insight and

self-knowledge, to help the client develop some insight and self-knowledge so that they can begin this process of integration, so that they can understand that a relationship can involve both elements of love and hate are good and bad, right? It's, and so you kind of know, same thing with splitting. You kind of know if someone is splitting later on as an adult because they'll engage in this very rigid, overly simplistic black and white thinking. They'll see the world so simply. They'll go back to those early dynamics of everything good and everything bad,

those two bins. If you know people that divide, the world up into those two bins, you're probably dealing with some version of splitting. Okay. Interesting. I think we're all thinking about people we know in our lives. Oh. Yeah. And so one of the aspects of splitting, by the way, is that because you can't resolve this distinction between love and hate, you're going to really struggle with competition. And so this is going to take us back to Kendra. So if you go back to the diagram, the circle around Kendra and Lauren and the red line and the three green lines, that's a version of splitting.

Think of the red line as love. I mean, the green lines as love. I called it dependency. And think of the red line as hate, right? It's trying to resolve those opposites. it's trying to resolve that that dialectic between love and hate that Kendra cannot do. And one of the reasons, which by the way tells us that there's something very primitive with her, something very infantile about Kendra.

But one of the issues with splitting is that when you encounter competition, when you engage in competition, there's a tendency to see. competitors as all bad. There's a tendency to see competition as hateful, right? And again, it's dividing the world up into the most simplistic categories. And so Kendra can't see the complexity of this. She can't see. She understands at some unconscious level that her attraction to Owen is inappropriate,

right, and not normal. She understands that society is not going to approve of that, I think. But what she can't do is she can't figure out a way to get Lauren out of this triangle. She makes it into this really unhealthy competition where, unfortunately, for Lauren, Lauren becomes kind of the, in the splitting, Lauren becomes kind of the bad person and Owen becomes the good person. So Lauren becomes the object and projection of all of Kendra's negative feelings, and Owen becomes the object and projection of all of her positive feelings. Interesting.

And so that's why you get, you know, she talks about essentially she kind of over-idealizes Owen and everything she says about her daughter is so negative, including asking her daughter to harm herself. Well, another great example of the projection that was actually pointed out in the film was Kendra referring to talking poorly of Lauren's looks and saying that she was anorexic and tiny, you know, and didn't have a butt or breasts while we learned that Kendra was actually starving herself and trying to lose weight. I mean, that's a great example that they actually pointed out in the film that she was ripping on her daughter for being very thin while desperately trying to reach that thinness. Right. Exactly. You know, another example. So, so one thing that

comes out from these texts is that there are, so there's, there's deeper and deeper levels to this analysis. And that is, there's a lot of shame here. There's a lot of inadequacy. And that also, by the way, is often part of this paranoid schizoid position for Melanie Klein, is that one of the critical, one of the crucial elements of that position is this chronic insecurity and this chronic inadequacy that follows us throughout life, even from those very early years.

It's this chronic shame. And you see that with Kendra in terms of her physical appearance. She makes so many comments, so many negative comments about Lauren's physical appearance, how ugly she is, right? How, her outfits, everything, right? Her body. And all of that's a projection. All of that is her own shame, her own shame over her looks,

her own shame over her feelings of her own attractiveness, because she can't cope with that, because she can't integrate that, because she can't make sense of her own feelings of inadequacy around her looks, She's putting it on her daughter. Yeah. And Lauren is a lovely, lovely teenage girl, too. So there's got to be some jealousy there too.

Right, exactly. And that's the other part of this. So the jealousy fits in with the competition. If you see your daughter as competitive or the same person, in this case, Owen, of course there's going to be jealousy. So jealousy is definitely driving this narrative because jealousy goes hand in hand with competition. Yeah.

Healthy human beings can compete. They understand that it's important to compete, but they don't necessarily, they don't try to vilify and dehumanize and hate their competitors, right? That's not healthy. That's not normal. Ultimately, again, the goal is to,

when you move from this paranoid skeezer position and the depressive position, the goal is to integrate these, different opposites and to create some balance around that so that you you can both you can compete but you also understand that cooperation and compassion are part of that or it can be a part of that yeah it's also i guess i think of polarization too in certain just ideas and thought processes when you talk about that yeah and there's another extremes Such extremes, right. And when you see people on the extremes, again, that gets back to splitting.

That gets back to this defense mechanism of splitting the world up into all good and all bad because it makes it easier. It means that we don't have to engage with the world at any meaningful level. It means we don't have to address the complexities of the world or ourselves at any meaningful level. If we just split everything into good and bad, both inside ourselves and outside of ourselves, things are easier, right? And so that if we see someone as a competitor and somebody who can threaten us or hurt us, it's easy. Just let's label them as bad.

Let's label them as, right. And without acknowledging your feelings of jealousy, without acknowledging your feelings of envy, which, by the way, envy towards the end of Melanie Klein's life, envy became a big part of her whole theoretical approach, which we don't have time to get into at the moment. But maybe another time. Or Patreon. Okay.

Yeah. So I, you know, I kind of wrote down some of the motives that the documentary brings up. One thing, Kendra, again, this would be denial. This would be another. Denial is one of the most primitive defense mechanisms. So when I say a primitive defense mechanism, I mean defense mechanisms that we develop very early in life and then we don't necessarily let go of, right? And so a healthy, there are defense mechanisms that would be considered more mature and

healthier. One of those would be humor. Humor is a way of coping with something, but it's a healthy way of doing it. It's not denial, right? So early on in this documentary, Kendra says something like, we all break the law, but, you know, if we don't get caught, right she's she's essentially rationalizing that what she did was fine because she says we all break the law she gives example sometimes people will drive drunk but if they don't get caught nobody cares right it

doesn't matter she's like but i happen to get caught so this is just like driving drunk right we all do it it's really okay i just happen to get caught i mean right okay that's how she's justified it what the heck that's that's denial that's rationalization it's that's silly um Here's some other interesting elements. So let's continue with our analysis a little bit here. She argues, she tells us that she was traumatized at the age of 17. She experienced a sexual assault. And presumably, because of that, she says, quote,

I was someone different in those moments. So she's talking about when she was a stalker. I was someone different in those moments. It's like I had a mask on. I don't even know who I was. Right? That's interesting. I mean, there's some insight there.

What she's saying there is that there's some element of dissociation. Yeah. And disassociation, by the way, could be consistent with trauma. It could be consistent with someone being assaulted at the age of 17. So that's not unreasonable. I think for Kendra, a lot of this occurs much earlier than 17. So I do see that as a little bit of a cop-out.

I don't want to minimize that because that could be an important part of this analysis. And I do want to say, by the way, that oftentimes splitting taken to an extreme, it's not hard to imagine that splitting, taking to extreme can be seen as a type of disassociation. So, yeah. So, so she's kind of identifying, she's kind of identifying this as,

um, this wearing a mask, right? Like, I wouldn't, I would, she's kind of identifying this as, uh, I would call this more an alter ego than say disassociative identity disorder, which is used to be called, that's what it's called now. used to be called multiple personality disorder. Taken to an extreme, disassociation is different identities. Wow. It's multiple personality disorder, right?

And so a lesser version of that would be what Heinz Coat, who had this theory in self-psychology, he referred to it as twinship or alter ego. The alter ego is essentially an alternative self. the alter ego is often seen as kind of a secondary self. So an alter ego can be both positive and negative. An alter ego, if you think of sports, so let's say a high school athlete is going to go compete in a basketball game. And they're like, okay, I'm going to put on my Michael Jordan

or my LeBron James personality for the game, right? They're going to try to channel LeBron James for the game. That's an alter ego. They're going to try to step into that identity and step up their game with it, right? They're going to play harder. They're going to pretend that they're Loram James. Alter ego, right? That's going to help them.

Potentially that could help them. But then you have Kendra's author ego, which is this crazed stalker, right? And she's kind of acknowledging that. She's saying she had this mask on. She doesn't know who she was. What's interesting about that to me is, this kind of follows the classic textbook analysis of offenders that you and I talk about all the time, which is that a lot of offenders across the board, stalkers, serial killers, mass shooters,

they follow this transformation from helplessness and powerlessness to powerful and dominant. Right. And if you look at Kendra's alter ego here, if you look at these texts, I think the first thing that people will notice about these texts is that they're super aggressive. So aggressive. So cruel. They're super aggressive. They're cruel. I would even say that they're violent to some degree.

Yeah, they're sexual. They're sexual. They're minors, you know. There's this campaign of intimidation. There's this, right, there's, she's trying to create fear. in the, not only does she create a bit of course of control and trying to get them to do what she wants them to do? Right. They're threatening.

She's obsessive. She's posting 40 or 50 texts a day. There's, so there's, you've got intimidation, you've got dominance, right? If you look at Kendra in this documentary or like people's perceptions of her, it's the complete opposite. Right? This is someone who's lying about, she's not working. so she feels incompetent around work. She feels like she can't master anything in her life.

She has to lie about everything. Right, that's part of this identity too. So in order to move from this feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, she creates this alter ego that's like this domineering, right? Intimidating person that's out there like getting everyone riled up. Okay. Creating all this fear. And it's, by the way, the fear is rippling throughout the community, right?

Everyone in that high school knows about it. Everyone in the community, all the parents are worried. Like, is this going to strike me? They're dividing up, it's dividing up the town, pointing fingers at one another, getting everyone against one another, afraid. And right. And so this is what's occurring there. You've got this kind of what I call the classic formula and understanding criminality.

you go from, right, you go from helplessness and powerlessness to powerful and dominant. And that's what you see. That's what, if you look at the voice or the person behind these texts, even though we don't know who it is, that's the persona they're trying to create. So that's an alter ego for Kendra. And by the way, that alter ego, you, you know, we've talked about one of my, the show Catfish. One of my favorite episodes is, is for those who have seen this, it's the Katie. Perry episode where this guy, Spencer, thinks that Katie Perry's in love with them.

And it turns out that it's this, this woman who lives in England, who is pretending to be Katie Perry. Spoiler alert. It's not Katie Perry. Katie Perry didn't fall in love with some random on the internet that she wrote for years and years. Okay, anyway, keep going. So when they finally catch up with the offender, with the catfisher, what she says is essentially what she says is, I pretended to be Katie Perry because it made me feel powerful and it made me feel alive. That's what she says, right?

It's the same dynamic here. When you create an alter ego, so catfishing is about creating an alter ego. Catfishing is stepping into some identity that you don't have, that you wish you had, and then playing that out. And often harming people as a result of that, not always, but it's quite often.

And so the goal there is it's the same. It's to feel stronger. It's to feel more competent. It's to feel right. It's to feel mastery. And so you have the same dynamic here. That makes sense. Wow.

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or 1-800-545-9. Let's go, let's get back to, let me just get back to Sean a little bit here, by the way. So you'll see Sean up there. Sean sort of, you know, the left out of all the dynamics. The blue line, I haven't explained this. The blue line between Sean and Laura means that they, that their relationship, I think their relationship before all the stalking was a relationship that I would describe. as connected.

So in other words, probably somewhat superficial, they're connected, but they're not particularly close. Okay. However, what's interesting, and this is worth pointing out,

towards the end of the documentary, Lauren says of her dad, quote, me and my dad have gotten so much closer since this happened. Yeah. Right? One of the,

one of the interesting consequences here is that this whole well first of all Sean and Kendra divorced now I believe right yes they are divorced luckily this whole this whole diagram

we're going to have to redo this whole diagram to reflect this diagram reflects pre-finding out pre-spoiler this diagram is pre-spoiler after spoiler stuff happens and so the one other thing is I think that's changed for the

positive is that I would actually draw now between Sean and Lauren, I would actually draw two lines. So I don't think that they're overly dependent. Maybe they are to some degree, but I think for the moment, I would consider their relationship as close. But close. As bonded, yeah. Close in a healthy way. Close not in a codependent, kind of overly dependent way.

So that's one of the real positives I think that's come out of this is that Lauren has connected with her father. in what appears to be a fairly healthy manner. They do more things together. With Kendra's enmeshment and codependency, do you think she actually kind of kept that from happening with Sean and Lauren? And then once she was out of the picture, a.k.a. behind bars, that went away.

Do you think she sort of made it so they can never get closer? If you look at, if you go, you know, during the documentary, there's this incredible moment. when the police come over to reveal the identity. You know, they do the big reveal that it's Kendra. The body cam footage. Right. And what's interesting, one of the interesting things about that,

one of the interesting dynamics in the body cam is that, as we talked about earlier, Kendra is physically, she blankets Lauren. She's all over her, right? She won't let her go, right? And so she's saying she can't be alone. and she can't be alone. I mean, this is the person that abused her. Right. This is the person that relentlessly abused her and told her to harm herself for a year

and a half. And here she is not letting go of her. And yes, I think, and Sean is just kind of sitting in the background. He's despondent. He's angry. He doesn't know what to do. He's telling Kendra to leave. But he's not, he's not interfering, right? He's not trying to, he's not trying to, he's not trying to separate Lauren and Kendra, right? And so that speaks to what you're saying. I think, yes, I think that Kendra's dependency on Lauren is partly a result of the fact that there's marital problems with Sean and she feels like she can get closer to Lauren because of that. But also, she's developing that dependency to keep Sean at a distance. Interesting. Yeah. Wow. Is that it?

I mean, that was a lot. But that's all you got? That's it. Well, I could read some more of these tax, but I think we're better off staying away from, I think I've read the main text that kind of shed light on this situation. But yeah, so those are, you know, it's a fairly, it's a fairly complex analysis.

And actually, you know, I could ask. actually add more layers to this if I knew Kendra's biological family and if I knew Sean's, right? Like there's, we could go way deeper with this if I knew more. But I, I'm limited and obviously to just the dynamic of this particular family. We're not backing up to their families of origin. I think that would provide even more layers and more depth. Yeah, agree. Email us if you know more. We can do part two. Yeah. Email us.

We'll do a follow-up. If you do no more, if you are family members with them, extended family and no more at hidden true crime info at gmail.com. This is a fascinating, fascinating Netflix documentary. Yeah, fine. You know, there's TikToks being made saying,

thanks, mom, for hitting me with a wooden stick and not cyberbullying me. You're the best. Everyone's rethinking their childhoods after this. Right. Yeah, maybe it wasn't so bad. I was just hit. I was kidding.

But I think it's important to keep in mind, too, before we finish tonight, that, you know, people are just astounded by this. And they should be. It's jaw dropping. It's crazy. It's, it's, it's, it's really hard to, to process, right? But then again, you and I, we cover. phyllisides all the time. I wish we didn't, but you know, mothers murder their kids. Yeah. Yeah. Mothers abuse their kids in the most horrendous ways, too. So this is kind of a

variation on that. I also want to point out how it's also shed light on just how traumatic cyber bullying and cyberstocking is. This is a new thing since the Internet's coming. out a new way to harass and hurt people with the most dot the most horrendous of consequences that you know i joked about those tic talks that people are saying thanks mom for you know just physically hitting me um i made a light joke but but there's a deeper message there which is people are saying this is so bad to do this is worse this can be just as bad if not worse than people abuse and i'm not going to compare i'm not trying to calculate here my point is is it also shed the light on this new way to hurt people, which is cyber bullying.

And John and I, you know, you and I have been learning a lot about this and the effects and we're raising a child. And it's horrendous. And I'm grateful that Owen and Lauren are still here and everyone else that was involved. I don't know many teenagers that would still be here. And I hope that they're healing and continue to heal. This will affect their entire life. And that was said in the movie too, that this, that teenage, those ages affect your entire life. Your brain is developing.

It will affect them forever. What happened to that. Yeah. You know, on that issue, thank you for pointing that out. I would really like to end on that note by pointing out all of. the impact on these victims and the impact of cyberbullying because you and I are becoming much more passionate about that. I think, you know, obviously raising a child, we have a lot of fear for the future and for like, I think the laws around this have not caught up with what's

occurring. And, you know, we, we know people that are kind of invested. in this area and I think we're going to probably collaborate with them a little bit and cover more of these stories because cyberbullying is so traumatic and it gives people like this whole idea of the alter ego right it gives people now have a platform where they can hide who they are yeah people have have platforms now where they control and they can do this so easily But let me mention some of the symptoms, some of the issues that occurred from the cyberbullying. Depression, sadness. Can I mention the S word?

No. Self-harm. Depression, sadness, self-harm. So Owen, Owen talked about getting to the point where he was really concerned about his, own safety for himself and self-harming. Fear, stress, anxiety, anger, rage, helplessness, insomnia, panic attacks, mistrust, mistrust in future relationships. I could go on and on.

The impact of cyberbullying is pervasive and it's deep and it's horrible. And unfortunately, I think a lot of adolescents are being a full. affected by this, even adults, and it may not be recognized as widely as it should. And so maybe this documentary will help draw more attention to this issue. Yeah, you can't escape it. That's the problem. It's incessant. There's no escape from it.

Right. And there's this uncertainty. You know, there's this constant uncertainty. There's constant fear. that the cyber bully is trying to intimidate you. The cyber bully is running a campaign of fear and intimidation. And so there's this helplessness. You can't turn it off.

None of these people can turn it off. They talk about getting rid of their cell phones, but they know that's not going to solve it. They try to eventually the FBI gets involved and figures out who it is. But before that, like, all these people feel just completely helpless. Yeah. It's in your home and your family. in your house.

We've talked about that too. When you are bullied at school, at least you know that maybe you can go to bed at night and have a moment of escape. But when it's cyberbullying, it's continuous and ongoing. Right. It's 24-7.

24-7. And it's, if you look at this from a psychological standpoint, you know, it's sort of like gambling. Like you, it's called variable reinforcement. You never know.

They never know when this. next text or message is going to occur, right? So they live in this constant state of panic and fear. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, thank you. Yeah. I wish Lauren and Owen and all the others affected by this healing. You, I don't think, saw this, but Sky Borgman has done a couple of interviews. I've read articles that Sky has done the director of this film. And she did say, that over the process of filming, she saw Lauren sort of processed exactly what her mother did. And Sky Borgman also did Sins of Our Mother, the film that followed Colby Ryan as well. And Sky said that she sensed Lauren sort of maybe seeing a little bit more reality or coming to terms a little bit more, but she has a long way.

clearly so we wish everybody like and i i keep mentioning Lauren and Owen but there were several students that were hurt that were blamed right were bullied yeah Chloe there were a number of Adriana and the film the film ends though on kind of the note that i think it seems like this was deliberate but it kind of ends on the note that Lauren can't wait or maybe that's too strong that Lauren is looking forward to reconnecting with her mother. Yeah. Yeah. To be determined. We'll see. Yeah. Thank you, everyone. And thank you for always recommending what you want us to cover. We actually get several

recommends a day now. But this one in particular, my goodness. So here we are. Spoiling it all for you. So thank you for asking and thank you, John. And thank you for allowing me to draw your little diagram, trusting me to do that. Yep. We can expand on the diagram if we learn more about the Kendra's and Shans and their families of origins and kind of their family histories too. But we'll save that for another day. All right. Thanks, everyone. Have a... Great night. I'll see you. Good night. Did you know if your windows are bare,

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