As familiarity with creating your own online characters and the ease of
internet use grew, more people discovered online interaction, and with more
people comes more opportunities, both good and bad. Many used digital communities as a place to
connect with others, to both seek and give help and consolation in times of
need and to laugh with in good times. Others
used them as a way to drain new friends emotionally and to gain attention for
themselves that they did not deserve. Debbie
Swenson is one such unscrupulous person.
On May 15, 2001, in Peabody, Kansas,
a 19-year-old college student and leukemia patient died of a brain aneurism. Her name was Kaycee Nicole, and she had made
many online friends through her blog ‘Living Colours’ and online at Metafilter.com. She also communicated with them through
email, instant messaging, and on the telephone.
Many people were inspired by her bravery in facing death at such a young
age, and called her, sent cards, gifts and money to a Post Office box her
mother set up, and felt a close connection with Kaycee. She loved to write poetry and was a host at
collegeclub.com.
Randal Van der Woning became a
close friend of both Kaycee and her mother Debbie, after meeting Kaycee online
in a chat room. He offered to set up and
maintain a blog for each of them on Blogger.com, and let them email him
entries, which he then edited for spelling mistakes and posted for them. Kaycee wrote about her own life, and Debbie
used her blog, ‘Journey toward the Rainbow’, to write about the trials and
tribulations of mothering Kaycee. Van
der Woning spoke with Kaycee and Debbie on the telephone, exchanged Christmas
gifts with them, and became close friends with them. (Van der Woning, R., 25.5.2001)
When Kaycee died, many of her
online friends wanted to express their sympathy with a small gift, and some
even wanted to attend the funeral. Debbie
refused all gifts, asking instead that people donate to cancer charities. Some of the Metafilter.com members started
searching for the obituary of Kaycee, and failed to find one in any of the
local papers where she lived. People who
had been following Kaycee’s story started to have doubts about its veracity. Several members of the Metafilter community
started searching for more evidence of Kaycee’s existence. Eventually, comparing stories and
experiences, they realized that no one had ever actually met Kaycee in person. While looking through pictures Debbie and
Kaycee had posted about Kaycee’s life, they found that several had been
altered, probably with Photoshop. In one
picture of Kaycee in her basketball uniform, they were able to make out the
distorted image of a school mascot, and traced it back to a high school in Oklahoma, in a town
where the Swensons had lived before moving to Kansas.
There was no Kaycee at that high school.
(<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kaycee-nicole/message/1>-<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kaycee-nicole/message/176>
Accessed 1.8.2005)
Some longed for even one fact, one
piece of evidence that Kaycee had been real.
Others had been casting doubt on Kaycee’s story since before her death. Intense arguments raged for several days. Finally, Debbie Swenson admitted that Kaycee had
not existed, but that her story was based on three different cancer victims
that Debbie had known, and the girl in the pictures was one of them. (<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kaycee-nicole/message/1>-<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kaycee-nicole/message/176>
Accessed 1.8.2005)
The actual girl who
appeared in the photos that Debbie posted of Kaycee was a local basketball
player named Julie Fullbright, who lived in a town in Oklahoma that the Swensons had left to move
to Kansas. The Swensons followed Julie’s accomplishments
avidly, especially Debbie. Another flaw
in Debbie’s lies were found, as Julie was very much alive. In a May 22, 2001 email from centrsgrrl@yahoo.com, posted to <http://rootnode.org/article.php?sid=26>, centrsgrrl described a telephone conversation
she had with Julie’s mother to tell her about the pictures of her daughter used
by Debbie Swenson:
She [Julie’s mom] said in a town that small, 326 people, star athletes
like her daughter were either envied or revered. She said the whole Swenson family had a
fixation on her daughter and would travel everywhere she went to see her play
basketball. Debbie especially just
adored her.
She was the one who gave Debbie the photos because Debbie offered to
make a photo album for Julie’s graduation.
She was supposed to return the photos.
And so, a strange situation became creepier. A mother uses images of another woman’s child
in a fantasy that involved much of the same attention Julie herself must have
received as a well-known athlete in a tiny Midwestern town. Debbie’s embodiment of a dying character to
whom she was also the mother placed her somewhere between having Munchausen’s Syndrome
and being the perpetrator of a case of Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy.
Munchausen’s Syndrome is a
condition in which a person deliberately makes themselves sick or pretends to
have textbook-perfect symptoms of serious diseases in order to receive
attention from medical staff. (Ernoehazy,
7.12.2004) Munchausen’s Syndrome by
proxy is a condition when a mother concocts or induces symptoms in her child in
order for the child to receive attention and unnecessary procedures from
medical staff. Neither of these
disorders have any real motivation for the patient other than the attention
they receive. (Mason, 7.12.2004) As with Debbie’s case, they do not seek monetary
gain. Though Debbie set up a P.O. Box
for Kaycee, she did not actively solicit donations, and sometimes reciprocated
when people sent gifts, cards and letters, as she did with Van der Woning.
Though children who suffer from Munchausen’s syndrome by
proxy are generally very young, Kaycee was different. As Kaycee was imaginary, Debbie had complete
control over the situation; where a real older child would have been able to
speak up and deny symptoms, or figure out what was going on and escape from the
situation, Kaycee was subject to Debbie’s every whim. Debbie was not able to seek medical treatment
for Kaycee, but she did get attention that she obviously craved, both through
her Kaycee persona and as the mother of her own persona.
Many people had strong feelings
about the whole charade. Van der Woning
was heartbroken. He stated that he had
lost Kaycee not once, but twice: when she died, and then when he learned that
she never existed. He had wanted very
much to meet her in person, and tried to arrange to see her. He later suspected that his insistence at
wanting to meet Kaycee face-to-face may have been what caused Debbie to kill
her off; every time he got too personal something bad would happen: ‘In
hindsight, any time the risk arose that I might ask questions, I was told some
dreadful family secret.’ (Van der Woning,
R., 25.5.2001)
A discussion board was created
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kaycee-nicole), and the Kaycee story got
national coverage in various publications.
Feelings were mixed about Debbie.
Some people were outraged; others saddened. Some were ambivalent about the whole
situation, others fascinated by the success of the fraud. However, they were all focusing on Debbie. Kaycee was created, not only by Debbie, but
also by everyone who interacted with her, who read her story, and who was moved
by Debbie’s performance of a young, bubbly, college student. This story did not exist in a vacuum; it was
not only Debbie’s personal fantasy. Jim
Finnis viewed the story of Kaycee’s life as separate from its maker’s problems:
Debbie created a quite brilliant work of art which moved us,
whether deliberately or as a cry of pain, or some manifestation of a
psychological problem – that does not matter to the work itself, nor should it…
She deceived us, yes, but I'm - weirdly enough - a better
person for that deception, both the story itself and the feelings I've had
since the story was revealed as false. I
don't want her to get persecuted for the act of deceiving us in such a
beautiful and moving way. (Finnis, 22.5.2001)
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