A teenage girl and her boyfriend were bullied online for years. The culprit was her mother.

Bullying. It's many parents' worst nightmare, and the one thing they want to protect their children from as they become more independent.

As well as fearing schoolyard bullying, modern parents now have to contest with online harassment, too. The internet can be a scary place, with trolls and bullies lurking on social media platforms and beyond.

But what if a child's bully is their parent?

It sounds unthinkable, but this is exactly what happened to one young woman.

Watch: Lisa Wilkinson on her experience of school bullying. Story continues below.

For almost two years, a teenage girl and her boyfriend received thousands of threatening social media and text messages, including hateful sentiments that told her to take her own life.

Then, in December 2022, the girl's 42-year-old mother, Kendra Licari, was arrested and charged with harassment and stalking of the pair.

What did Kendra Licari do?

On the surface, Kendra Licari appeared to be your run-of-the-mill suburban mum living in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, who worked as a basketball coach at her daughter's school.

In a bizarre and sad turn of events, Kendra created a fake online persona to catfish and bully her daughter over the course of two years. She sent thousands of messages to her daughter and another teen — her daughter's boyfriend, Owen McKenny — managing to go undetected by using software that altered her IP address and area codes to make it seem like the perpetrator was another teenager.

Kendra Licari. Image: Isabella County Jail/

According to arrest warrants, the messages included incredibly hateful and threatening sentiments so vile, it's hard to imagine a mother sending them to her child.

"Most messages contain hateful speech and contain language like, 'kill yourself...' A lot of the messages repeat this same language," read the warrant.

A lot of the detail included in the messages were "specific in nature", which made the victims believe they were coming from someone they knew. The messages and harassment had become so damaging, the pair eventually reported the cyberbullying to authorities. 

Kendra accompanied her daughter to file the official report.

After the complaints around the harassment were filed, the FBI stepped in and their work soon led them to a clear assailant: Kendra. Through their investigation, they compiled 349 pages of "demeaning, demoralising, and just mean texts", and had enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant.

Where is Kendra Licari now?

After the charges were brought forward, Kendra pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking a minor and entered into a plea deal. In 2023, Isabella County Judge Mark Duthie handed down a sentencing that included between 19 months and five years in prison.

"I can't imagine any parent saying such horrible things to her own daughter," Judge Duthie told Licari during the sentence hearing.

"It's the kind of case that makes me glad that at the end of my term, I'm retiring."

In response to the sentencing, Kendra addressed the court and said she was "ashamed, remorseful and embarrassed" for her actions before insisting she would get help for her mental health issues.

She is currently serving her sentence at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Michigan and is eligible for parole later this year.

Feature Image: Isabella County Jail, Canva.