A mother is being charged with an absolutely mind-boggling crime — cyber bullying children, including her own daughter.
The woman from Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, is Kendra Licari. She faces five charges for allegedly sending hateful and bullying messages under a fake name and number.
Kendra, 42, was charged on December 12 with two counts of stalking a minor, two counts of using a computer to commit a crime, and one count of obstruction of justice.
Kendra had attempted to obstruct police by framing another minor for her actions during the investigation.
Prosecutors say the harassment began in early 2021 when Kendra was working as a basketball coach at her daughter’s school.
The 42-year-old actually helped investigate the messages when her daughter and the daughter’s then-boyfriend first complained to Beal City Public Schools, per ABC News. Police became involved, however, when it became clear that many messages were received away from school. But “even when we realized that it wasn’t a kid, we weren’t expecting that it would be a parent,” Superintendent William Chilman tells ABC News.
Most of the online harassment, cyberbullying and catfishing happened off of school grounds and didn’t involve school devices, and by mid-January 2022, after district officials realized they weren’t able to find the perpetrator on their own, they called law enforcement for assistance.
Authorities, who worked with the FBI’s computer crime division, found Kendra had tried to mask her identity and location using fake numbers and virtual private networks, Isabella County prosecuting attorney David Barberi tells the Sun.
“But eventually, we were able to see that her IP address was popping in and out right before and right after these messages were going through,” he says, per ABC.
“The digital footprint was just insane,” he continues, alleging Licari sent a dozen texts a day for months. “We had tens of thousands of text messages” sent to Licari’s daughter and her daughter’s friends. “It was mostly just harassing-type text messages, demeaning, demoralizing, and just mean texts,” he added.
It wasn’t until the end of April into the beginning of May that law enforcement notified Chilman that they believed Kendra to be the anonymous cyberbully.
During their investigation, Barberi told Morning Sun that his office had managed to compile over 349 pages of harassing texts and social media messages sent by Licari to her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend over the course of their investigation.
Kendra has since been released on a $5,000 bond, per ABC News.
Watch the video below for more details: