Trigger warning: bullying, child abuse
The American TV network Lifetime has premiered a film based on the real story of a mother who spent months cyber-bullying her daughter and the high-schooler’s boyfriend while she helped authorities track down the culprit.
Kendra Gail Licari, from Beal City, Michigan, is currently serving time in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of stalking a minor in 2013.
Now, the shocking events have been turned into a movie titled Mommy Meanest, which premiered on Saturday (May 11) on the small screen.
In April 2023, a Michigan mom named Kendra Licari was sentenced to prison after bullying her daughter online for months
Image credits: Isabella County Jail
Licari’s daughter began receiving harassing and demeaning messages through text and social media in 2021. The teen and her then-boyfriend reportedly received these texts up to 12 times a day for months.
After her daughter told her about the messages, Licari began working with the boyfriend’s mother to find the cyberbully.
She also reported the crime to her daughter’s school district, which contacted local law enforcement after failing to find the person sending the texts.
Now, Lifetime has adapted the shocking story into a film titled Mommy Meanest
Then, when local law enforcement’s cybercrime resources were exhausted, local authorities reportedly sought help from the FBI.
The intelligence and security service found that Licari had been using a virtual private network (VPN) to hide her location and encrypt her personal data.
The FBI managed to lock down the IP address from the device used to send the messages and discovered it belonged to the girl’s mother.
Licari began sending hundreds of harassing and demeaning messages to her daughter through text and social media in 2021
While she initially claimed that one of her daughter’s peers had sent the vile messages, Licari later admitted to bullying her child.
The 43-year-old, who had been working as a girl’s basketball coach at her daughter’s school when she sent the texts, was charged in December 2022.
Four months later, she was sentenced to between 19 months and five years in prison.
Licari is now serving her sentence at Michigan’s Special Alternative Incarceration Women’s Facility. She is up for parole on November 3, 2024, and her maximum release date is April 3, 2028.
She masked her identity by using a virtual private network (VPN) that made it seem as though the texts were coming from different numbers and area codes
The mother is remorseful about the crime and cried as she told the judge she was sorry for the pain, hurt, and confusion her actions caused the victims, as per the Morning Sun.
Isabella County prosecutor David Barberi said investigators analyzed over 1,000 pages of evidence, according to CBS affiliate WKRC Local 12.
“By and large, it was mostly just harassing-type text messages, demeaning, demoralizing, and just mean texts,” Barberi described. “It’s probably one of the most bizarre cases I’ve seen.”
The teen and her then-boyfriend reportedly received demeaning texts up to 12 times a day
The messages also included “obnoxious” doctored photographs.
“Sometimes, you see the worst in human nature,” Judge Mark Duthie told the court in April 2023.
“I can’t imagine any parent saying such horrible things to her own daughter.”
As the mother pleaded guilty to the crime, the victims didn’t have to go through trial.
In the Lifetime film, Licari is played by the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Rinna
The motive remains unclear, but Barberi believes the mother sent the abhorrent texts because she wanted to feel needed by her daughter.
“Someone else coined the term, but they called it a version of ‘cyber Munchausen’s syndrome‘ in a sense that this seems to be the type of behavior where you’re making somebody feel bad or need you in their life because of this behavior,” he said.
The Lifetime film offers an alternative theory about the mother’s behavior.
In the dramatized version of the events, divorced mom Madelyn (played by Lisa Rinna) starts sending harassing messages because she feels replaced by her daughter Mia’s (played by Briana Skye) new boyfriend.
People reacted to the “sick” and “twisted” events depicted in the film
