‘Unknown Number’ Mom Kendra Licari Had Unresolved Trauma She Blamed for the Cyberbullying of Her Own Daughter

When Netflix dropped the bomb of a documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, it went viral for not only what happened to Michigan teen Lauryn Licari, but also the person behind the intense cyberbullying she experienced. It is revealed toward the middle of the doc that Lauryn's mom, Kendra Licari, was responsible for the harassment that Lauryn and her then-boyfriend, Owen McKenny, faced for almost two years.

But why did the mom in Unknown Number do it? The idea of the mother of the main victim in the cyberbullying case, who was also close to both teens involved, being the culprit was hard for some viewers to wrap their heads around. But Kendra admits to it in the doc, and you can't really deny that it happened after she also admitted to it in a court of law and served time in prison for what she did.

In Unknown Number, producers ask Kendra why she cyberbullied her daughter and Owen. Some of the text messages to her daughter included claims that she, as an unknown individual, was secretly dating and sleeping with Owen. The texts took a darker turn when they told Lauryn, who was 13 and 14 at the time, to harm herself.

Many of the texts also pointed to possible insecurities Lauryn had about her body and preyed on them. Kendra gives a few different, almost conflicting, reasons in the documentary about why she sent the text messages to her daughter. Kendra's reasons are in Unknown Number, but viewers aren't sure what to believe.

One of Kendra's reasons is that she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. As Lauryn became a teenager, Kendra wanted to protect her. According to her in the documentary, being the source of those texts enabled her to remain close to her daughter. Another reason she gives is related to her claim that she didn't send the original few texts.

Kendra says that she began sending texts to Lauryn and Owen to weed out the culprit who sent the original texts, though that doesn't explain the severity of what Kendra said to the kids. When a producer asks Kendra if she was targeting herself subconsciously with her insults to her daughter in the texts, she agrees that this could be another reason for her cyberbullying.

There is also the theory in Unknown Number that Kendra suffers from Munchausen by proxy, but through cyber activity. After the documentary premiered, director Skye Borgman told Variety that Kendra "said it was kind of fun" to film the documentary, despite the weight of what she did and how it impacted her daughter and other kids in their community.

At the end of Unknown Number, viewers learn that Lauryn is open to working on a relationship with her mother, who had, at the time, been recently released from prison. Since the documentary came out, Kendra has not publicly shared whether she and her daughter have a relationship now. Though at the end of the documentary, Kendra seems sure that they will be close again.