"Trigger warning: This piece contains mention of suicide. Netflix's Unknown Number: The High School Catfish documentary begins with an ominous warning: "All of the text messages in this film are real." The texts in question were cruel messages sent to small-town Michigan teens, Lauryn Licari and her then-boyfriend Owen McKenny, over a period of nearly two years. The anonymous texts included sexual taunts and insults about Lauryn's body, and even urged suicide. The barrage continued after Lauryn and Owen broke up,"
"The Unknown Number subject said that she was "not scared of [Lauryn] hurting herself," despite sending messages that encouraged just that. Licari also suggested that her own previous trauma might have played a role in her behavior. "As she started getting older, I started having things that were suppressed come forward," she said of Lauryn, adding that she "wanted to try to control the outcome of her journey.""
Anonymous, cruel text messages targeted Michigan teens Lauryn Licari and her then-boyfriend Owen McKenny for nearly two years. The texts contained sexual taunts, body-shaming insults, and urged suicide, and continued after the couple broke up. Authorities identified the sender in August 2022 as Lauryn's mother, Kendra Licari. Licari denied responsibility for the initial messages, said she later sent texts intending to expose the original sender, and admitted to spending up to eight hours a day messaging while claiming to be in an awful mental state. Licari pleaded guilty in 2023 to stalking two minors and was sentenced to prison.
Read at Bustle
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]