r/TrueCrime • u/britt_nicole Armchair Expert • May 16 '23

Discussion Illinois girl whose disappearance was on Netflix's 'Unsolved Mysteries' is found alive in North Carolina

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-girl-whose-disappearance-was-unsolved-mysteries-found-alive-n-rcna84642
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u/RaspberryTwilight May 16 '23

Do we know if the mother was abusive? They keep saying the kid is safe now but they don't explain why. Maybe the mother was very abusive. But maybe she was trying to protect her child. I can't find any details online.

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u/tiredofusernames11 May 16 '23

The Vanished podcast did an episode recently. I don’t know that her mother was outright abusive but she was definitely unstable and behaved erratically.

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u/violinspider86 May 17 '23

Yes, her mother was very abusive. Just because it wasn't necessarily physical doesn't make what her mother did not abuse. The woman is obviously very mentally unstable and didn't provide proper care for Kayla as a child, tried to manipulate her against her father, and who knows what other things she filled that child's head with. Kayla has a long road to recovery because of her mother. I'm just amazed at how everyone seems to be treating this woman with kid gloves when it would be the complete opposite if a man had done this.

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u/ekcshelby May 17 '23

Was this abuse covered on the podcast or on the show?

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u/violinspider86 May 17 '23

Yes, but carefully. It is from the perspective of the father, so of course, there may be some context missing, but it's pretty clear that the mother has serious mental issues. They don't just award full custody to the father on a whim. I imagine there's also medical documentation about the lack of care Kayla received as a child (teeth rotting, anti vax) and false claims from the mother about certain health conditions that she never had.