After suffering years of abuse due to her mother's Munchausen by proxy syndrome, Gypsy
Rose Blanchard aided in the slaying of her psychological captor.
She was sentenced to prison for 10 years, but she claims that she now feels freer than
she ever did under her mother's roof.
This is her story.
Trapped in her own home
Gypsy Rose Blanchard didn't know her own age.
She just knew that she was deathly ill.
She also knew that she needed to get out.
Her mother Dee Dee Blanchard suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, a mental disorder
in which caretakers exaggerate, fabricate, or in some cases even cause illness in another
person, in order to get attention for themselves.
It's often considered a form of child abuse, and Gypsy was confined to a wheelchair and
hospital rooms for much of her life, even though she wasn't actually sick.
Gypsy and her then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn conspired to end the life of Dee Dee, who was found stabbed
to death in her Springfield, Missouri home in June 2015.
Godejohn and Gypsy were arrested and charged.
This case has gone on to receive plenty of media coverage, particularly in the HBO documentary
Mommy Dead And Dearest and the Hulu TV series The Act.
A desperate escape
In addition to the psychological abuse, Blanchard claims that her mother Dee Dee was also physically
abusive.
This included withholding food for days and hitting Gypsy Rose with a coat hanger.
The abuse was bad enough that Gypsy Rose tried to escape.
After one such attempt, her mother literally held her captive by chaining her to the bed
and putting bells on the door.
"Did you ever fight back?"
"No, because I was too afraid to."
In February 2011, Gypsy Rose, then 19, met up at a sci-fi convention with a 35-year-old
man, who invited her to his hotel room.
Dee Dee found out and brought papers claiming that Gypsy Rose was a minor.
When the mother and daughter returned home, Dee Dee reportedly took a hammer to their
computer.
The health benefits of prison
Although Dee Dee Blanchard claimed that her daughter suffered from a variety of illnesses,
in reality, Gypsy has only one occasional physical condition: a lazy eye.
What's more, Gypsy's health has reportedly improved since her incarceration, no doubt
thanks to her no longer taking many medications her mother was giving her.
Gypsy's attorney, Michael Stanfield, told BuzzFeed News that while most inmates lose
weight in prison because the food isn't exactly fine cuisine, the opposite happened for Gypsy.
She gained 14 pounds in jail while waiting to enter a plea in her case.
Gypsy has admitted that she knew she wasn't as unhealthy as her mother claimed, although
she did believe her mother when she told her she had leukemia.
Though the ailments weren't real, the surgeries and their effects were.
The removal of Gypsy's salivary glands, which her mother instigated by applying a numbing
agent to her gums, was particularly painful.
Gypsy has speculated that the numbing agent may have also contributed to her tooth loss.
A controlling ex
Nicholas Godejohn has reportedly tried to keep in touch with Gypsy Rose since their
arrests, but she doesn't want to communicate with him.
Godejohn, for his part, has demonstrated a possibly unhealthy obsession with Gypsy, whom
he met on a Christian dating website in 2012.
Dee Dee knew about Godejohn as Gypsy introduced him in hopes of attaining her mother's approval.
But that plan backfired, as Dee Dee became jealous and ordered her daughter to stay away
from him.
Gypsy now believes that Godejohn was similar to her mother in terms of their controlling
natures.
"He had multiple personalities that were violent and scary."
Doctor suspicions
There was at least one physician who didn't believe Dee Dee's claims about her daughter's
illness: a neurologist named Dr. Bernardo Flasterstein.
He told ABC News that when he examined Gypsy for muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy,
he had a feeling something was amiss.
After he told Dee Dee that he believed Gypsy's prior diagnoses were incorrect, instead of
being relieved, she grew furious and stormed out, screaming to his nurses that Flasterstein
was a quack.
He then wrote Gypsy's primary care physician a letter saying that he suspected Dee Dee
had Munchausen by proxy, although he didn't think the situation was dire enough to contact
child protective services.
Flasterstein wasn't the only doctor with suspicions.
A police report obtained by ABC News claims that one of Gypsy's doctors notified authorities
that they weren't able to detect any symptoms that supported Dee Dee's allegations about
her daughter's illnesses.
Child services visited the Blanchards' home twice but claimed to not see anything untoward.
Improving relationship with dad
Gypsy Rose was estranged from her father, Rod Blanchard.
She even told ABC News that she never knew her father even paid child support for her
until after her mother's slaying.
According to Rod, this estrangement was by Dee Dee's design.
He told Fox News,
"[Dee Dee] spent a lot of time making sure that there was distance between us.
A lot of times I would call Gypsy and she wouldn't be available to talk to me, but the
next day she was … I would call her on her birthday, but Dee Dee would tell me, 'Don't
tell her it's her 18th birthday.
I don't want to tell her how old she is.'
I just thought some of that was kind of weird."
Rod says that though Gypsy is in prison, their relationship has actually improved since Dee
Dee's death.
They email frequently and Gypsy calls him often.
A shorter prison sentence?
Gypsy Rose Blanchard believes that she should be in prison, but not necessarily for a decade.
She understands why she's been locked up, but as she explained on Dr. Phil, she's not
convinced that ten years behind bars is the best remedy for her.
"I don't believe that I'm in the right place to get the help that I need."
Blanchard was sentenced to ten years as a result of her guilty plea to second degree
slaying.
Despite her desire for a shorter sentence, she's admitted that she actually feels, quote,
"freer" in prison than she did when she lived with her mother, which she's described as
a different type of prison, one in which she couldn't have friends or go outside.
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