On December 28, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was charged with second-degree murder, was released from prison in Missouri.
After she got released from prison, Blanchard got to experience life more freely than she did when she was in prison or with her mother and spent time with her husband Ryan Anderson, who she got married to when she was still in prison.
“I’ve been spending time with my husband, his family, my dad’s side of the family,” Gypsy said, “I tried zucchini and ate fried fish for the first time. And I just came back from New York. It was such an amazing trip!”
Deedee, Gypsy’s mother, had subjected Gypsy to multiple medical procedures that she didn’t need.
According to PEOPLE, “It was argued in court and is widely believed that Gypsy was a victim of Munchausen by proxy, a rare form of abuse in which a guardian exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy.”
Some medical problems Dee Dee claimed her daughter had were sleep apnea( when she was just a baby), leukemia and muscular dystrophy(when she was eight years old), seizures, asthma, and problems with her hearing and eyesight.
Despite all the pain Gypsy’s mother caused her, she regrets how the events were carried out.
“Nobody will ever hear me say I’m glad she’s dead or I’m proud of what I did. I regret it every single day,” Gypsy said.
Since news got out of what happened with Gypsy and her mother, there have been multiple documentaries and movies made based on them. However, Gypsy disagrees with the way some of them executed their show.
“They’re portraying her as mean all the time. And that’s not how she was. She was very charming and very relatable. Her personality was bubbly and friendly to the outside world,” Blanchard said.
Many questioned how no one figured out what was happening and why child protective services were not called.
To this, Gypsy responds “They did come to my house. [But] they were asking me the wrong questions. They were checking for bruises. And at that point, my mom never hit. There was no follow-up report. They came one time and then closed the file. She became increasingly paranoid after that.”
Dr. Marc Feldman, an expert in Munchausen syndrome by proxy, explains the situation.
“The control was total in the same sense that the control of a kidnapped victim sometimes is total,” Feldman said. “Her daughter was, in essence, a hostage, and I think we can understand the crime that occurred subsequently in terms of a hostage trying to gain escape.”
