What to Know
Seeing as we’re living in the digital age, as long as you’ve shared your boundaries around photo-sharing pictures of your kids with your friends, you’ve probably never given a second thought to the times when a close friend snapped a photo of your child. Now, what if that friend started using photos of your child to depict this whole other life for themselves?
A woman on TikTok recently shared a disturbing story about how her best friend used multiple photos of her baby girl to “digitally kidnap” her and create a narrative that she’s her mother. When a coworker of the friend discovered the truth, she messaged the mom to let her know and that’s when her entire friendship with this woman completely changed.
A mom shared how one of her best friends ‘digitally kidnapped’ her daughter and she had absolutely no idea.
@marissalayb Replying to @kelley.87 ♬ original sound – marissa
A mom on TikTok named Marissa (who has the handle @marrisalayb) posted a storytime video that shared some rather shocking information. Marissa starts the nearly 10 minute video by stating, “My best friend digitally kidnapped my daughter.” That works to get your attention, doesn’t it?
Marissa goes on to share that after hearing that her best friend was planning to quit her job due to a “crazy” coworker who was causing drama, she received a message on social media from a stranger who ended up being her bestie’s coworker. This person told her, “Hey, mom to mom, I just feel like you need to know that one of your friends is posing as your daughter’s mother.”
Of course, Marissa was alarmed and puzzled, but she decided to give her friend the benefit of the doubt. She messaged her friend about what the woman had said. Her best pal immediately defended herself by saying that her coworker completely “misconstrued” things and she’s just causing trouble because she never told her directly that she’s the baby’s mother.
While they were on the phone, her friend kept insisting that Marissa block the woman and not talk to her. After taking a little time to think about her strange reaction and talking with her husband about it, Marissa decided to message the woman back to see what she had to say. And what she found out completely rocked her world.
Her friend had shared several private photos of her baby to create this fake life that didn’t even exist.
Through her text exchange with her best friend’s coworker, Marissa was sent some screenshots that were utterly shocking.
The coworker sent her screenshots of her friend claiming that she was taking her daughter to the doctor’s. The coworker also sent her a screenshot of the friend sending her a Merry Christmas photo of her daughter that Marissa had actually sent to her friend.
Marissa also shared that one day when her friend came to pick her up to take her to a tattoo appointment, she came in and saw her daughter in her playpen and snapped a photo of her being “cute” in nothing but a diaper. She later learned that her bestie had sent that photo to her coworker as a pseudo “holiday update.”
The friend even went so far as to take photos directly off Marissa’s social media and send them to her coworker. She also manipulated Marissa’s birth story and shared it as her own via text message.
The coworker found out the truth by a friend of a friend who knew Marissa and said that’s not your coworker’s daughter, that’s Marissa’s baby girl. Marissa shared that she confronted her friend and recorded the conversation to contain verbal proof of her admitting to what she did.
Marissa explained that she did call the police and a deputy went over to her former friend’s house to watch her delete all the photos of her daughter off her phone. She has not pressed charges, but she may change her mind down the line.
People online are shocked and are warning the mom about what can come from these types of predatory actions.
As usual, people in the TikTok comments have some things to say about this mom’s intense storytime about her former best friend.
A lot of people couldn’t help but draw parallels between Taylor Parker, who faked her pregnancy and killed her friend to abduct her baby. Netflix recently released a popular documentary about the tragic event called Maternal Instinct. One person in the comments said, “What in the Taylor Parker?😳.” Another person shared, “So, I saw this documentary….. please be safe.”
Another individual in the comments couldn’t help but praise the mom for not going to meet up with her friend when she wanted to explain herself. “Mother’s instinct 2.0 when she asked to meet up. Thank god you said no,” they wrote. Who knows if things could have escalated to a dangerous level?
Weirdly enough, another person in the comments shared an eerily similar story of their own. “Omg there was a girl I used to work with that claimed she was pregnant and when she showed me her ultrasound it was actually another coworker of ours who was actually pregnant,” they wrote.
While one person in the comments urged the mom to “Please press charges, that is so terrifying,” another shared their thoughts on parents posting photos of their kids online. “We are in a day and age where it’s not safe to post your children online. There are too many horrible humans out there, and even though it’s a small percentage to the people who mean well… just one sick person is enough,” they wrote.
Sadly, that is true. It only takes one person with bad intentions to put yourself or your kids in harm’s way. It’s really a shame that it was Marissa’s longtime friend of over 10 years who ended up being someone with nefarious intentions.
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