Our Story

I have something I would like to share. I’m a Filicide Survivor, or at least that’s the most accurate term I can come up with. Filicide is the act of a parent killing their own child. I feel like this is easier to say than “I’m a survivor of parental death threats and assaults with deadly weapons." You know the houses that end up in the newspaper where a parent kills all the kids, and everyone is shocked? I come from one of those, I just made it out alive. There were numerous threats, even attempts, on my life while my brain was developing.

To my knowledge, I do not believe there have been any studies on this type of trauma and its impact on adult survivors. Because it’s so unbelievable, I will include evidence from both of my sisters and witness statements (included in Supporting Information). To avoid retribution, I will tell this story with changed names for anonymity. I will go by Victoria (maiden name Balcom).

I’ve essentially been in therapy and mental health treatment my entire adult life. I was left with numerous humiliating symptoms and no believable story for how I came to have them. When I told the truth, I would usually be interpreted as the delusional one. I was thrown out into the world with no life skills and a wicked case of CPTSD. I don’t even want to know what I’ve spent on therapy or treatments by now. Probably a couple hundred thousand. My counselor tells me to write a book. I started one in an effort to save my sister’s life. Unfortunately, I ran out of time. My sister is now gone and I will probably never finish it. I’ve included the first two chapters of what I wrote in the blog. I desperately want someone to study this type of trauma, but a book seems like quite a mountain to climb. My middle sister, Rose, spoke often of writing a book and studied psychology to understand our “parents.” In one of our last conversations, she said she wanted to accomplish at least one thing before she left this earth. I hope I can do her some justice by telling the truth about her life. If her story, even told anonymously, helps anyone, then to me, Rose has accomplished her goal on earth. As a survivor, I know any story I can relate to helps me put words to my experiences, helps me understand myself, and helps me explain the unexplainable to others. The closest on-screen adaptation I have seen to my childhood home is Sharp Objects. It’s pretty close if you add a lot of screaming and nix the actual murder. If my and Rose’s story can do for others what Sharp Objects did for me, there is no greater honor than to tell it.

Few can wrap their heads around biological “parents” who would do this. It’s very hard to be believed. Further, my “father” was a top executive at an international food/beverage company, an arrogant millionaire, and 6’5”. It’s impossible for me to explain to others how a 5’5” woman with no job completely controlled him. I don’t understand it myself. I hate stating his job title because others interpret me as arrogant sometimes (I’ve seen the eye rolls), but I’m not stating it out of ego. I’m stating it in an attempt to explain how they got away with everything and why I’ve rarely been believed. People do not expect child abuse like what we went through to come from a household like mine with wealthy, educated “parents.” Gary, my biological father, is a clinical Narcissist, but my therapists have theorized Beth, my biological “mother”, is Borderline with tendencies that surpass Sociopath on the spectrum into fully Psychotic based on her documented behavior. Perhaps only someone further along the spectrum could wield such power with a Narcissist, as he (almost) let her get away with murder on numerous occasions. Beth also has Munchausen by Proxy and my sister Rose was her victim for 43 years. My “parents” have never seen a mental health professional in their lives, but I do know these diagnoses for certain, as do others. I think anyone who takes the time to read the Supporting Information would come to the same conclusion. My psychiatrist also floated Folie De Deux for Gary, otherwise known as Shared Delusional Disorder.

In January of 2025, I was told by my “family” that my sister Rose was strangled and bludgeoned in her apartment. First she was murdered by an online date. Then she was murdered by an “illegal alien.” I told work in shock, and thankfully Judith (my oldest sister) admitted she said that to me in writing (included in Supporting Information). For two days, I was tormented with mental images of Rose being violently murdered. Then I spoke to the investigator assigned to her case. There were no marks on her neck. She had not been murdered at all. She slipped and hit her head. It was an entirely preventable accident. She called me begging for help in June of 2024, crying, “They’re gonna kill me, Victoria!” “They” being our “parents.” I journaled this prior to her death and e-mailed it to myself (included in the Blog). After, I asked my “parents” to set up a trust to help her get the treatment and care she needed. They refused. I then filed a 75-page adult protective services report in October of 2024. I will link the introductory letter to the report here. It was the last thing I could think to do to get her away from our “parents.” Rose shut the case down out of fear and told my therapist on a zoom call “they always win.”

I would like to highlight this story includes the failures of both child protective services (CPS) and adult protective services (APS) to do any investigation, even when presented with a teen reporting severe life-threatening abuse and later on, APS with a 75-page report in hand. I called APS to inform them upon her passing and an agent adamantly refused to read one word of my report. Rose did not work, her only means to obtain this alcohol in such vast quantities was Beth and Gary, including the alcohol on the night that killed her. Rose had a drinking problem, but she had more trauma than anyone I know. Gary and Beth knew she had a drinking problem, but would give her alcohol. Beth also gave her Clonidine, which can cause coma or death when combined with alcohol. She fell in the fall of 2024 and sent me a picture of her bloody face after taking Beth’s Clonidine with alcohol. They refused her real trauma treatment with a qualified therapist or center, easily within their budget, and she was left with severe trauma few could comprehend and no coping skills. She frequently cried to me that no one believed her and everyone looked at her like she had two heads when she tried to ask for help.

I know some of you are probably already thinking Rose was an adult and it’s her fault she was in that situation. It’s easy to say that from an outside perspective, but I watched them abuse and sabotage her for decades. Someone not leaving an abusive situation never excuses the abuser. Rose was developmentally about sixteen years old, which my therapist also observed when she met with her on zoom.

Why is it if someone walks up to you on the street and punches you, you can sue them when the impact on your life is minimal, but you cannot sue wealthy individuals who threatened their children with death, creating what is essentially a life-long disability?

A critical component for consideration is the unprescribed medication Rose was given by force. It may seem odd to you that parents of this age could force anything on an adult. Please reference Rose’s messages in Supporting Information in which she describes living under threat of losing electricity, food, or her cell phone if she did not comply with the vitamin and medication regimen Beth enforced on an often daily basis, along with other demands. I know from my own, at times, horrific, experiences, that psychiatric drugs are powerful, with potential to control, change, or create new behaviors. My husband, Jack, documented witnessing Beth giving me pills at random in the witness statement he wrote for APS (included in Supporting Information). He was also given unprescribed opioids for a minor hand injury. I spoke to a former boyfriend of hers after she passed who remained a friend and witnessed the last years of her life. He specifically stated on his own that he observed Beth Balcom as having Munchausen by Proxy and that she was always giving Rose pills. Rose’s ex-boyfriend, Daniel, from a decade before also wrote a witness statement for APS documenting these behaviors (included in Supporting Information). To acquire the medications, Beth Balcom would go to the family doctor (never a mental health professional) and complain about anxiety and depression. But she never took these medications herself. Instead, she doled them out at random to her children (both through childhood and adulthood). Rose and I used to giggle together as children as we occassionally hid the pills and supplements we were given in the napkin holder/salt and pepper shakers. Beth believed she was capable of treating Rose on her own, which is a key reason Rose never received sufficient treatment or trauma care. Beth was not and has never been remotely qualified to give out psychiatric drugs and diagnoses. I truly don’t understand how so many feel that responsibility lies at Rose’s feet when she was a developmental teenager and her ability to make decisions likely compromised by the abuse of her brain chemistry. 

Further, they charged her with domestic violence (against them!) twice when she was drinking and defenseless. Supposedly, Rose tackled Beth down the stairs and broke her hip about fifteen years ago (I wouldn’t blame her if this did happen), but as you can see from Judith (in Supporting Information), Beth and Gary will lie together and more than likely, Beth was screaming and hitting first. I have witnessed it myself as they jointly lied to CPS three weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday. I was told my case would be thrown out in weeks and I completed high school with even more abuse as a result. I’m not sure why CPS did not bother to involve the police considering child abuse is a crime.

Rose was never violent with me, period. Rose never expressed any aggressive intent towards our “parents” to me. They began paying her car insurance (which must have been a fortune), lawyers, rent, and everything else while she was unable to work. They purchased the alcohol as she had no means to get it herself and they’ve admitted to doing so to both Judith and I. They likely spent far more controlling her than getting her real trauma treatment. Meanwhile, I can see that they have $2.5 million in real estate and Gary agreed to donate $1.5 million to the college he graduated from, which is one of the first articles that comes up when you Google his real name. Obviously, treating the trauma they caused their daughter was not a priority.

I know that some will see this as revenge, disapprove, or somehow sympathize with Gary and Beth despite the evidence they repeatedly threatened to kill their own children. I counter that with this: this needs to be studied. Maybe by speaking up, there’s a chance that will happen. I’ve been subjected to psychiatric malpractice (I was told by an attorney I had a good case, however, damages weren’t high enough to warrant the stress) and I do believe some mental health professionals might have written me off as a pathological liar. I theorize that may be more common than those with a stories like mine. I once attended a first time appointment with a female counselor where I tearfully recounted the horrors of my childhood. She appeared to be a combination of bored and annoyed. I received a letter in the mail shortly after informing me my follow up had been canceled as she was not the right counselor for me. That felt uniquely awful. Rose had a far more difficult time than I did and frequently complained, even laughed, about getting “fired” by counselors again and again.

Some of you will write me off as playing the victim. However, this is not for the sake of sympathy should anyone recognize me here. I’ve taken responsibility for addressing my trauma and issues in therapy I funded for decades. I cannot say the same for the remaining members of the Balcom “family.” I try not to think of myself a victim, rather a survivor. I’ve stumbled my way through life doing the best I can. I find few mental health professionals understand how to treat this type of trauma. I’ve battled severe insomnia, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks my whole life. I’ve struggled with alcohol, although I quit entirely nearly three years ago, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts (I cannot imagine why with a mother who once suggested, “why don’t you go slit your throat?” to me). There have been many times in life where I’ve felt so untethered that I couldn’t find a soul to trust. It is incredibly frightening. Rose truly loved me, but she fell into deep addiction and became an unintentional source of severe pain and someone I could no longer rely on. There were times where I felt crushed under the weight of my own trauma, unsure if recovery is even in the cards for someone with my history and desperate to know of any survivors for comparison. I wanted to know if anyone had truly recovered from this type of trauma. I still don’t know and consider myself a recovery in process. I cannot claim perfection as I have hurt people too, but in my case it’s always out of fear as opposed to malice, and that is always followed by guilt.

I realized last year I had a bad case of Survivor’s Guilt and felt I had “left” Rose behind. I left to save myself, but I didn’t get to leave my childhood behind. Rose never got away from our “parents,” and because of that, I never really got to get away from them. Rose would frequently call and inform me of the horrors she continued to endure for two decades. There were a couple of years where I was the only child left in the house with our parents. Rose and Judith both went away to college. But ten to twenty years later as an adult, Rose’s calls still sounded just like myself as a teen. Stuck alone with our “parents” while begging friends for help on AOL instant messenger. Rose would plead and I would feel so helpless knowing no help was coming for her. I knew just how terrifying it was and could feel it with every fiber of my being. Often, Rose’s calls would come on holidays, such as Christmas, my birthday, or vacations where I was feeling lighthearted and surrounded by friends. In an instant, her distressed cries and heartbreaking circumstances would transport me to a place somewhere between the adult I was and the child who felt it all. I was so shaken by every call that returning to participation in whatever I was previously engaged in was usually impossible. I love Rose deeply and always will. But when she was here, I’m ashamed to admit we would often cringe when the call came in because we knew our event was over. I felt guilt for this when she called. My compassion for her was a heavy weight to bear. I documented the experience of one of these calls in the Blog. I did my best to listen knowing I was the only one who could understand, but at times I had to block her to save myself from drowning. It was an incredibly hard and guilt-filled decision to make over and over. It ripped my heart to shreds, but at times it felt like I had to choose between Rose and functioning for my child. And as much as I tried, I could not help her.

After I filed the APS report, my trauma history was on the surface and I felt like I was barely surviving. I blocked her when she shut the case down to save myself, but also because I hoped that by removing myself as the only one who understood, she might be motivated to reach out to APS for help. My last ditch effort to save her life. It backfired, and I had her blocked when she died, something I’ll have to live with the rest of my life. She said I was the only one she trusted, and I was not there in the end. It was a tragedy.

The only way to improve conditions for future survivors and save lives like my sister’s is for survivors to speak up and tell their truth. Lifelong abusers’ reputations are not worth the silence that costs innocent lives now and in the future. Maybe, just maybe, a Rose of the future will not have an early and tragic death because I chose to speak today. Maybe if the signs of this abuse were studied and recognized sooner, we could have been saved as children and Rose would still be here.

In one small study I found of seven children immediately after the fact (the only study I could find), it identified children from these households as having age appropriate verbal abilities and they were less likely to report abuse. The stakes are higher, and I remember covering for my “parents” at many times when I could have escaped. Other times, when I did speak, I was not believed. I wouldn’t do this just for revenge, and I know I risk a smear campaign. I’m taking this risk for the truth and I am scared. I even feel some guilt for sharing this, but my loyalty belonged to Rose and my heart is with survivors.

Some of you will disapprove out of fear of your own children calling you out. Well, if you’ve apologized to your children, you are worlds ahead of Gary and Beth because I don’t believe the word “sorry” has ever managed to come out of their mouths. I begged them to acknowledge traumas that occurred and gave them through the age of thirty to apologize. They had so many opportunities for repair but continued their abuse into adulthood instead. They refuse to acknowledge anything, including a replaced basement door with dozens of knife holes (Beth chased both Judith and I with that chef’s knife). Further, this is in Judith’s list (included in Supporting Information), and I only remember it once, but Beth pre-meditated the removal of phone and ethernet cords to elevate fear in her children. I vividly remember coming home from school and discovering in horror that the ethernet cord was gone, only to run down the hall and find all the phone cords were removed ahead of an attack.

I hold my parents responsible for the early death of my sister. They stole her entire life and now they are writing her off as as a drunk and making up obnoxious lies about her death. They still claim she was murdered. Her best friend cried as he explained to me Gary stoically told him Rose was murdered, emotion free, the same day. Beth was also posting excessive memes on Facebook in the immediate hours after finding her daughter’s body, while Gary began posting about politics in days. Some of these memes complimented Beth’s own parenting. It likely would have occurred to a normal parent that she would still be alive had they transferred her care through a trust as requested by their other daughter months before. They never even held a funeral or memorial for Rose. If they did, I was not informed nor invited, and her friends were unaware. I do not know if I would have attended because it is unhealthy for me to be near them, but I do know Rose deserved a funeral.

Rose was beautiful, kind, and intelligent with an IQ of 122. She could have done anything with halfway decent parenting. It sounds ridiculous, but I’m not lying when I say her face seemed like that of an angel with a smile brighter than the sun. If I could share a picture, you would simply sense her inherent goodness. She made mistakes out of trauma (as have I), but her essence was that of the most purely kind human being I’ve ever known. She was severely traumatized with a type of trauma that isn’t studied or understood. She was not just an alcoholic (I find people rarely are). I cannot let my “family” write her off that way. I wish I could add her real name to clear it.

Gary and Beth’s trail of destruction is enormous and they belonged in jail when we were children. Unfortunately, they are millionaire lifetime criminals who give out money and gifts for others to look away. They get to live out their days in their luxury home while my sister lost the last forty years of her life. She spoke often of her dreams of getting married and having kids, right up until the end. She had a right to live out her dreams. I was sent to a Christian School where I took Bible classes, learned what Jesus said, and then had to come to accept that my biological “family” was not really Christian. If anyone was a true Christian in the Balcom household, it was Rose, who endlessly forgave her abusers to her own peril, despite being treated like an abused animal that was owned for decades, not Beth and Gary.

Societal misunderstandings compounded both our trauma. Others reacted in disbelief when we told them stories about our “parents”, even about death threats. The response we often heard from others was “they are family” and so we need to forgive and reconcile. We were literally raised to feel we were always wrong. These comments registered to us as we were “bad”, and we would return (or stay, in Rose’s case) for more abuse. The feedback we received lead us to believe we should be interacting with our abusers. Societal misunderstanding felt a lot like a repeat of Gary and Beth’s gaslighting as they never acknowledged anything they did. Others not believing us mimicked that. When others told us to forgive and/or reconcile, they did not realize that from my perspective this is essentially the equivalent of asking a veteran to sit next to bombs going off and get comfortable.

Some of you have and will say I have hatred in my heart and need Jesus. I feel it’s a form of blasphemy to claim “Jesus” while committing a lifetime of evil actions and blatantly ignoring his words with no remorse or accountability. For those that will still say I am the one who needs Jesus, I will cite Proverbs 24:24-26: “Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts they harbor deceit. Though their speech is charming, do not believe them, for seven abominations fill their hearts. Their malice may be concealed by deception, but their wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.” My loyalty belonged to Rose, and my heart is with survivors.