SPOILERS Netflix Unknown number - the high school catfish

[Heckthewhat]

Potentially one of the most disturbing documentaries I’ve watched. How could you do that as a mother to your own daughter? I am honestly baffled after watching that.

It was very disturbing. The mum is clearly very mentally unwell but also manipulative. I’m glad Lauren hadn’t seen her but is clearly missing her. She is very traumatised - who wouldn’t be by this. I really hope she’s getting good therapy and support. I hope the lad is too - his family seem stable and good.

I just watched it. Appalling woman, truly awful.

As for the seemingly strange reactions from Lauryn and her dad, I really think it just didn't compute at the time, for either of them. Their brains probably went into shutdown, and The dad focussed on the job and finance lies because that is far more emotionally maneagable than facing up to the abuse.

I really don't understand why she wasn't charged with sexual offences against minors. She's clearly lying about her motivation for doing it. How can you protect your child from hypothetical sexual assault by verbally sexually assaulting her?

The second there was the Big Reveal it was obvious the daughter knew already. She didn’t bat an eyelid. That wasn’t shutting down, it was more being paralysed by divided loyalties.

The mother was very disturbed and quite unrepentant. Those messages were beyond awful. It adds to the suspicion though, given that she was so confident that her dd would not have killed herself, that the dd was aware of who the messager was.

The mother is seriously insane! All the talk of, “well we’ve all broken the law a bit haven’t we, come on! Who hasn’t driven drunk or whatever?”
I’m sorry but drunk driving is not at all ok or something we all do, it’s also not remotely comparable!
It’s not like she didn’t pay her tv licence, she was sending sexually explicit messages to minors, telling her own daughter to go kill herself and also trying to frame another innocent teenager. All very deliberately for a sustained period of time, she needs a mental hospital!

I don’t think the husband or the daughter knew, the police weren’t spelling it out enough to properly sink in and I think they were both dumbfounded by the idea that all of, everything, was actually her all along.
The husband focusing on the lies about her employment makes sense because the other thing would need more time to process to even formulate a response.
Unfortunately, as with many medical cases of Munchausen by proxy, the daughter has been groomed to have in unhealthy reliance on her mother and is still struggling to accept the reality of what happened to her. She’s going to need a shitload of therapy and I sincerely hope she gets it.

Owen and Khloe's parents seem to think Lauryn knew it was her mother. I think that's why Owen doesn't want to have anything to do with her. I don't think they believe Lauryn wasn't aware who it was. But even if Lauryn realised at some point that it was her crazy mother who was sending these messages to her - how messed up must that have felt!!! Those messages are truly vile

The most jaw dropping thing I’ve watched recently. Lauryn seemed to be in complete shock/not comprehending when the police were there, I don’t think she knew. The emails/texts from her mum since read like classic love bombing too. I think this is still a young girl (child?) who loves her mum and hasn’t processed it at all and is still being subjected to conditioning/coercive control. The mum hugging her when the police were there was awful.

was anyone else not getting frustrated that both sets of parents didn’t just take the kids phones away when the messages started getting bad? First thing you’d do surely is change their number and keep if very private. Then if the messages continued it would have been obvious much sooner that it was a close contact. I know Owen’s mum eventually did this in the scene where she’s crying but she looked broken by that point and he had already said in response to one of the messages he was suicidal.

At the most basic level I think Kendra wanted her daughter to complete suicide so she could 'comfort' Owen and begin an abusive sexual relationship with him; it's clear throughout she had already attempted to start.
If she was a father, she'd still be in prison now.

Yes!!! It was sooo frustrating!! Why did they let the kids read all the abusive messages?! I mean Kendra for obvious reasons, but what about Lauryn's dad?! And why did Owen's mum not just keep the phone and give him a new one with a new number?!

I think this is closer to her true motives than anything that lying piece of work could ever admit.

Her motive for all this was an obsession with Owen. Her own daughter was collateral damage in her twisted pursuit of him.

It made me cry 😭 shocking

She seemed completely detached from her wrongdoing didn’t she? Trying to pass it off as something anyone could’ve done. I agree with PP that this will land fully with the daughter later.

I watched this and it's one of the most twisted "real life" things I've ever seen. The mother showed no remorse really. It's blown my mind this week!

Totally agree that the mother wanted a relationship with Owen. Her daughter was just something that was in the way of that. A total monster.- her cousin painted a clear picture of a woman who loved attention, a total narcissist. Lauryn will need so much therapy to get over this - it probably won’t really hit her until she has her own kids.

But I am not sure they told the daughter what she was being accused of when they came for the warrant. They may have made out it was something to do with her job, so the daughter didn't have the trauma of discovery when there were no other family members around to support her.

Or it could have been staged afterwards for the documentary. It seemed oddly well filmed for just a standard police bodycam arrest.

I don't agree. People often shut down completely and go into shock when faced with information they can't compute. They look deadpan and unemotional. That doesn't mean they are wise to what is happening. It can mean the absolute opposite.

She is responding automatically - her mum hugs her because something bad is happening and she hugs back - that is normal, everyday learned behaviour for her. To be able to react properly she'd have to have processed what she was being told and she was a young teen and probably didn't believe it at all in that moment, if she even fully followed what was happening. Also, her mother was obviously a very controlling person in her apparently sweet and caring way and children of very controlling parents often don't respond to anything emotionally until they have been given the signal from the parent on how they should respond. They are trained to be very obedient. Her mum's signal was: hug me - we are close, and she obliged. I found that heartbreaking, not suspicious.