When Protection Becomes Control
A Psychological Look at Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
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The High School Catfish
Spoiler Alert! We are about to give away the end of the documentary in the first paragraph. If you don’t want to know the end, save this article, go watch it, then come back.
Netflix’s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish left me unsettled. The case was already disturbing enough. A teenage girl being harassed for over a year through anonymous texts and messages. But the real gut punch came with the reveal: it wasn’t a jealous classmate, or an online predator. It was her own mother.
That’s the kind of twist that makes us stop and ask: what could possibly drive a parent to do this? As a counselor, I naturally look at these stories through the DSM lens. And while no diagnosis from afar can ever be definitive, there are some clear psychological patterns worth unpacking.
A Digital Twist on FDIA
The closest clinical category here is Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA). We used to call it Munchausen by proxy. Typically, it shows up when a caregiver fabricates or induces medical illness in someone they’re caring for, often a child, to maintain attention, sympathy, or control.
Kendra Licari didn’t fake medical symptoms, but she created a crisis nonetheless. By bombarding her daughter with anonymous harassment, she generated a problem that only she could later “help” solve. The dynamic is eerily similar: the parent manufactures suffering in order to keep the child dependent. This unmistakably produced severe distress in her daughter. Only this time, it’s Cyber-FDIA.
But FDIA alone doesn’t quite capture the full picture. The content of the messages, sexually explicit, cruel, sometimes telling her daughter to kill herself, suggests something more than just attention-seeking or misguided protection.
The Dark Triad Running the Show
To really understand this case, I think we need to look beyond disorders and into personality traits—specifically the Dark Triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (Note that I am aware of the new Dark Tetrad, but sadism did not fit here).
Vulnerable Narcissism: This isn’t the loud, arrogant narcissism we often picture. Vulnerable narcissism is fragile and hypersensitive, desperate for affirmation and terrified of abandonment. In Licari’s case, her actions look less like ego inflation and more like a desperate attempt to keep her daughter tethered to her at all costs.
Machiavellianism: The manipulation was elaborate and calculated. Hundreds of messages. Fake accounts. Careful concealment. That’s classic Machiavellian strategy: long-term deceit in the service of control.
Psychopathy: What stood out most to me was the callousness. Watching her daughter spiral under the weight of harassment, and not stopping, reflects an alarming lack of empathy. Refusing to take full responsibility for her actions was another indicator of psychopathy. Even if she wouldn’t meet criteria for full-blown psychopathy, the trait was alive and active.
With the statement, “Everybody has broken some law in their life. Nobody is perfect”, she made the Dark Triad evident. In this case, the Dark Triad wasn’t just present, it was driving the bus.
Trauma and the Distorted Logic of Protection
Licari later shared that she had been raped as a teenager. She framed her harassment toward her daughter as a twisted form of “protection,” suggesting she created a problem that would keep her daughter close, safe, and coming to her for help. In her mind, maybe she was shielding her daughter from the very dangers she had endured.
But here’s the truth, trauma might explain why her fears were so heightened, but it does not excuse or fully explain her actions. Many people endure sexual trauma, often at the hands of someone close to them. Almost none go on to send their own child sexually explicit messages, attempt to ruin their life, or tell them to kill themselves.
This went deeper than “I got raped.” Trauma may have been the seed, but pathology was the soil it grew in.
The Perfect Storm
At the same time, Licari was losing her job, suppressing her own trauma, and avoiding accountability. That combination created fertile ground for character flaws to take over. Without reflection, accountability, or support, trauma can metastasize. Stress, loss of identity, and secrecy cracked the door open, and the Dark Triad walked right in.
This is the part I can’t stop thinking about. It wasn’t just trauma. It was trauma + personality traits + a lack of accountability and boundaries. That’s when fear of losing a child morphs into controlling them, destroying them, just to keep them “safe.”
Why This Case Is Different
We all know parents who are overprotective. Many of us have seen trauma survivors carry their fears into their parenting. But this case is different. This isn’t the natural endpoint of being “too protective.” It’s something darker.
That’s why the story rattles us so deeply. It takes something familiar. It’s the instinct to protect your child. Yet it twists it into something unrecognizable. The very bond Licari claimed to protect ended up destroyed. Or was it? The daughter’s reaction to the news almost presented “I figured it was her.” Much like the story of Rapunzel, even though the daughter knew, she couldn’t bring herself to accept what her mother had done.
Why It Matters
It would be easy to write this off as one woman’s madness. But I think it raises bigger questions:
How do trauma and personality pathology interact?
At what point does “protectiveness” become control?
And what safeguards, like family, friends, and community, might have stopped this spiral before it escalated?
In an age where technology makes it easier than ever to monitor, manipulate, and entangle those we love, these questions aren’t abstract. They matter for how we parent, how we relate, and how we check ourselves.
A Final Reflection
The irony is crushing. In trying to protect her daughter, Licari destroyed her. The very bond she wanted to preserve now lies in ruins. That’s the tragedy here. Love, once twisted into control, becomes indistinguishable from harm.
The lesson for the rest of us is simple, but not easy. Real protection never requires manipulation. Real closeness never has to be forced.
We must recognize the line between care and control, and have the courage to stop before we cross it.
Stay Classy GP!
Grainger
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I don’t believe her actions were primarily directed toward her daughter at all. I believe the true target and motivating character was her daughter’s boyfriend. The daughter was collateral. A mother jealous of her child being with the type of boy she wished she had been with in her youth and likely fueled by her own sexual trauma. The explicit sexual nature of the texts were around him and his sexuality it seemed. The focus was on his satisfaction through degrading the daughter and calling into question her ability to please him (a deep insecurity held by nearly all women).
Also, the fact that the texts were later directed at the mother of another young girl the boy began seeing. Completely detached from the daughter’s relationship to the boy. I found it telling that that girl didn’t receive texts, but rather her mother. She viewed the mother as her primary competition or obstacle, not the young girl.
Lastly, she developed a very close relationship with the boy’s mother and worked alongside her during their “investigation”. I can’t help but imagine this was not only to keep tabs on what people were finding out in order to redirect suspicion onto other possible candidates (the other female friend at school and the cousin), but also to monitor any potential “Freudian Oedipus Complex” dynamics between the mother and her son.
This is sexually predatory behavior overriding maternal instinct. The daughter was simply in the way of the mother’s sexual fantasy and ultimately deemed disposable collateral. Her subconscious mind decided the well-being of her child was worth less than the gratification of her sexual desire.
Pure speculation as I’m no professional. But I believe it may behoove us to consider the most victimized individual (the daughter) may not have been the primary target or motivating factor behind the behavior.
Another double-edged sword of being in a position to help... Right, Grainger? When men are ostensibly the ones to be helped, is this danger part of what makes men reluctant to advertise their vulnerability and open themselves to "help" for it?