Mommy Dead and Dearest

Erin Lee Carr's documentary opens with the killing of Dee Dee Blanchard and then descends somewhere much darker. For years Dee Dee convinced everyone that her daughter Gypsy Rose was gravely ill: the wheelchair, the feeding tube, the endless surgeries and medications. Gypsy had none of those illnesses. The name for this is Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where a caregiver presents the person in their care as sick, or makes them sick. The most disturbing thing in the film is not that nobody around them noticed for years. It is that everybody praised Dee Dee as a self-sacrificing mother. Money was raised, awards were given, a house was donated. The murder was committed by Nicholas Godejohn, whom Gypsy met online. Gypsy pleaded guilty, received ten years and was paroled after eight. The film aired on HBO on 16 May 2017 and is what brought the case to public attention. Who it is for: viewers drawn to true crime and to the less visible forms of abuse. Who it is not for: anyone unable to sit with accounts of child abuse, or who will find a film trying to understand a murder uncomfortable.