Your love of true crime is not more important than trauma survivors’ agency over our own stories.
Social media has been abuzz with the news of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s release from prison where she has been since 2016 for the murder of her captor and child torture perpetrator — her mother.
A troubling trend has begun to emerge as seen in this TikTok — a demand for Ms. Rose to share her story so she can “go viral” and feed some true crime fans’ thirst for entertainment at any cost.
What is missing from this conversation is an acknowledgement that behind every true crime story, there are victims and survivors who must live with that truth for the rest of their lives.
Ms. Rose is 32 years old and has never lived as a free person.
To demand entertainment from her before she’s even taken a breath of freedom is beyond cruel.
Childhood torture is about the perpetrator having complete domination and control over their victims.
Based on the publicly available details of Ms. Rose’s case — such as being bound to her bed, having an unnecessary feeding tube inserted, and having food withheld by her captor/mother — I believe her case fits the definition of child torture proposed in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma in 2014: “severe childhood maltreatment involving a longitudinal period of abuse characterized by at least two physical assaults, and two or more forms of psychological maltreatment, resulting in prolonged suffering, permanent disfigurement/dysfunction, or death” [as proposed by Knox et al., 2014].
One of the ways that survivors begin to recover is by having agency over our stories.
We choose when and where and how to tell our stories — or even IF to tell our stories.
By creating a hostile, demanding online environment before she’s even out of prison, internet personalities are toying with her agency — effectively revictimizing her.
When survivors do begin to tell our stories publicly, we deserve for them to be held with compassion.
If we could capture the attention of society without a demand for entertainment in return, perhaps we could create a safer world for survivors.
Maybe even one in which we don’t send survivors to prison for self defense against their captors.
Learn more about childhood torture and how you can help survivors here:
https://www.tiktok.com/@_ali_davis_?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
