Sept. 12, 2025, 4:02 a.m. ET
Note: This column contains spoilers from the documentary “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish,” references to cursing and sexual activity, and examples of bullying.
Imagine being a teenage girl and suddenly receiving texts like these from an unknown number:
u are the ugliest person I’ve ever seen
u are worthless n mean nothing
jump off a bridge
KILL YOURSELF B—-
Now imagine receiving tens of thousands of disparaging, cruel or sexual texts like these − sometimes up to 40 to 50 per day − for weeks, months, over a year. This is bad enough.
Then, one day, you find out the person sending graphic texts meant to horrify and abuse you is the person who is supposed to protect and love you most in the world, your own mother.
This is the true story of Lauryn Licari, featured in Netflix’s “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish,” the most-watched film on the platform right now. In Beal City, Michigan, in 2020, along with her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, 13-year-old Lauryn was cyberbullied via an unknown number for more than a year. After school administrators and local police couldn’t solve the crime. The FBI did after agents were able to link an IP address to a phone number belonging to a shocking culprit, Lauryn’s own mom, Kendra Licari.
As a mother of two teen daughters, I found this story to be gut-wrenching and horrifying on so many levels.
But “Unknown Number,” the documentary itself, is perhaps as enraging as the story it tells. The film shows where law enforcement went wrong, and the creators are too empathetic with Kendra, a predator and perpetrator with what appear to be sociopathic tendencies.
Law enforcement and the legal system failed Lauryn Licari
By the time the film reaches the climax, revealing that Kendra was the perpetrator this entire time, the film is already shocking. But it gets worse.
When local law enforcement went to her home to confront Kendra with the allegations and tell Lauryn, the officer failed to separate the perpetrator and the victim, who are mother and daughter. Via bodycam footage, audiences can see Kendra hugging Lauryn. The officer struggles to convey to Lauryn that Kendra, her mother, was the person verbally abusing and sending explicit sexual messages for over a year.
Lauryn, obviously shocked and a victim of trauma bonding, looks stunned. No one else consoles her. Trauma bonding is a psychological response to abuse and occurs when “the abused person forms a connection or relationship with the person who abuses them,” according to MedicalNewsToday. That’s what we’re watching.
This pivotal moment is glossed over. There is so much more happening here than just a “catfished” number harassing a teen. A psychologist’s or other third-party expert’s opinion would have provided insight here and throughout the entire film.
The legal system didn’t do much better. After the investigation, in 2022, Kendra pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor, among other things. In 2023, she was sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison, and in 2024, she was released from prison. She is on supervised parole until February 2026.
Given the severity and number of the messages, I think she should have served more time.
Netflix mishandled Lauryn’s story and let the viewers down
Netflix is a powerful platform, ranked third after TikTok and YouTube in terms of downloads, but the show’s creators failed the teen victim and did a disservice to us, too.
“Unknown Number” focuses most on the mystery of who is sending Lauryn such heinous text messages. It casts all the key players in a sympathetic light, including her mother, to start. When we discover that Kendra is revealed as the villain, something Kendra, Lauryn and the film’s creators knew all along, it feels like we have been duped. That’s strike one.
Strike two occurs when the mother shows patterns of dishonesty, manipulation and cruel behavior, yet the creators seem to allow Kendra to manipulate them and, thus, viewers. For example, few, if any, questions are reserved for Kendra, demanding to know why she sent sexually explicit text messages to her daughter about Owen, the boyfriend. Texts like these:
he wants sex, bj’s n making out
u don’t give it up
he cheated on ur ass for more
At one point, Kendra explains her crime and attempts to downplay its severity: “Every single one of us makes mistakes. Not a single one of us has lived a perfect life. And, realistically, a lot of us have probably broke the law at some point or another and not got caught.”
The mom is not pressed for any further explanation.
The show’s director, Skye Borgman, said that she was “deeply curious” about Kendra but that the mother is an unreliable narrator.
“I think her memories have sort of changed her version of the truth,” Borgman told the “Today” show. “I think she’s got a little bit of revisionist history.”
Borgman is correct. Kendra is unreliable. But this sentiment wasn’t conveyed. The show opted for a plot twist rather than portraying Kendra as an obvious villain. Law enforcement and Netflix did not protect a teen when she could not protect herself. Then the entertainment value was more important than exposing and vilifying an awful abuser.
It seems like I was more horrified than anyone in the film, except maybe the prosecutor. But I wasn’t the only one. Reddit and social media threads are full of users who watched the film and are aghast at the way Lauryn’s father, law enforcement, school administrators and, of course, Kendra, seem almost nonchalant about this crime.
Healthy, loving parents don’t create fake phone numbers to harass and bully their own child for years. Perhaps the film’s creators didn’t feel it was their job to insert their opinion, but the rest of us can be horrified and more aware of the villains walking among us.
Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track.
