This is Different

I have never been sure where I fit in the trauma world. Trauma groups can sometimes be re-traumatizing for me. I imagine other Filicide Survivors might feel the same. What I mean is a lot of child abuse occurs as the result of an alcoholic parent. I have a huge heart for that trauma as well and am very familiar with alcoholism. However, alcoholics carry shame. When I enter these circles, child abuse survivors often tell me about their healing reconciliation with their parent(s) after they quit drinking. They think that experience is what I need to heal. If you reference my 2015 post in Supporting Documents discussing the guilt I felt going no contact, you will see I have made a ton of effort. I think the issue is that most Filicide Survivors are likely to come from homes with parents who fall into the categories of extreme Narcissism, Borderline, Sociopathic, and/or Psychopathic categories. These are individuals, much like Gary and Beth Balcom, who do not feel shame nor regret, are the least likely to seek mental health support, and are highly unlikely to take responsibility or ownership for anything negative they may have done. My “parents” did not consume alcohol. They chose to do these things sober (out of their own mental illness). As a child, I recall thinking alcohol was a “solution.” The reason I believed this is because I rarely saw my “parents” drinking. But when I did, it was usually only a glass or two of champagne with friends and it seemed to improve their mood. I seriously wondered as a small child, “Why doesn’t my mother just drink?” Now I know better. I probably would be dead if she had been an alcoholic on top of everything else. In my youth, before much mental health intervention, I believed I could drink my way out of becoming my “mother.” It’s no wonder I struggled with alcohol for a long time.

What if psychologists recognized this in a Filicide Survivor sooner? As you can see in my post at thirty, I was still looking for Gary and Beth to have an honest conversation. I had already been in mental health treatment a long time. I did have a counselor at that age who told me I could not have my “mother” around my yet to be born child and that’s when I went no contact. I initially only asked for space, but the full no-contact occurred as a result of her reaction. What if counselors widely recognized that reconciliation efforts are unlikely to lead anywhere and could help these survivors reach a place of no contact in a healthier manner? To this day, I am still receiving messages from my “father” stating he does not understand. My “parents” act oblivious to anything they did to me and my siblings. They have never come to me seeking forgiveness, yet I am told regularly to offer it to them.

Rose did have some counseling, which could have been part of her probation. It was not nearly enough. Her counselors did not have the experience to handle her as a patient. Her therapists were chosen for her by our “parents.” In the fall of 2024, I looked up who ended up being Rose’s second to final therapist. She appeared to be in her early 20’s. Sometimes, when an individual has a lot of complex trauma, inexperienced mental health professionals can make things much worse. I learned the hard way that I also need a therapist for myself with a significant amount of experience in treating trauma. If you reference Supporting Documents, Rose’s anonymous post, you will see Beth Balcom also called these therapists behind Rose’s back in an effort to taint the relationship. This also happened to me when I was a young adult. Further, her only mental health treatment was seeing this counselor once every two weeks over zoom for one hour. I personally do individual therapy and group therapy weekly, in addition to marriage counseling, and have attended many groups. Rose did not have enough support for a Filicide Survivor. Inexperienced counselors would insist she could create boundaries when she could not. I believe it’s impossible to create boundaries with a Sociopath or Psychopath. Any healthy boundary is taken as an attack and is responded to with escalating abuse. I have messages from Rose indicating she thought they believed they owned her. When we both spoke with my therapist over zoom in the fall of 2024, we were laughing about how they would frequently take the doors off our bedrooms as punishment, usually for locking the door. This continued to happen to Rose through adulthood. We also laughed at the time they removed my toilet seat as punishment. My therapist was not laughing. I suppose none of this is funny, but our best defense mechanism has always been laughter.

For trauma to be treated, it has to be acknowledged. Rose’s CPTSD was never acknowledged by Gary and Beth Balcom. Her PTSD was instead blamed on a burn accident while removing a casserole from the oven. She was “diagnosed” by Beth Balcom with Asperger’s, Agoraphobia, and Schizophrenia. Beth believed marijuana birthed Schizophrenia in Rose. For the record, Rose barely used marijuana, to my knowledge, as her eating disorder made her fear an appetite. I wish she had chosen marijuana over alcohol. I was also “diagnosed” with Schizophrenia and Asperger’s by Beth Balcom, which no other doctor has ever agreed with (counselor letter included in Supporting Information).

In most child abuse scenarios, abusers are repeating patterns of abuse they experienced themselves. When I’m in group therapy, I often hear survivors trying to find forgiveness with statements  like, “I know they did they best they could.” I cannot say that. My “parents” absolutely did not do the best they could. In my own search for forgiveness, I have asked siblings of both my “parents” about their childhood only to find that while there were some traumatic events, it was, “Nothing like the stories I’ve heard coming from your household.” I have these messages as well. Beth Balcom was apparently not an individual repeating a pattern. She experienced some trauma and apparently got so angry about it she took it out on her daughters in a far more traumatic way. My theory is that, when it comes to Filicide Survivors experiences, you may find fewer repeating patterns of abuse from the abuser and instead more severe personality disorders driving the abuse.

If I haven’t made it clear already, “you should forgive your parents,” “she’s your mom,” “that’s the only family you’ve got,” etc. are highly traumatizing statements for Filicide Survivors. And often extremely damaging. Survivors may feel like they are doing something wrong by breaking off contact with their “parents,” as both Rose and I did. Filicide Survivors may take this advice and repeatedly return to “parents” who are never going to change. As a result, they only receive more trauma and abuse. It happens to me often. People will not stop pushing this ill-informed advice even when I’ve explained my mother chasing me with a knife. It’s weird. I feel like if someone admitted their parent sexually abused them, people are more likely to stop pushing reconciliation. No contact is just understood as the right move. But for a Filicide Survivor, I’m not sure what the issue is other than maybe most assume we’re lying because it’s rarely studied. The level of psychological manipulation my sisters and I endured was and is extreme. I imagine this is the case for other Filicide Survivors as well. When you ask a trauma survivor to look for the good things in their abusers, you are providing assistance to the abuser’s psychological manipulation. I believe few would ask an woman in a domestic violence situation to describe the “gifts” she was given in between beatings, yet somehow it is rare for someone to be able to apply the same logic to a Filicide Survivor. A lot of my family members point to smiling photos and times where we we warm with them as evidence the abuse couldn’t have been that bad. Is this not the exact same pattern seen in domestic violence relationships where the abused partner repeatedly returns? Are there not smiling photos of Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie? And the Menendez family? Pictures mean nothing.

I don’t understand why people find the abuse we endured so hard to believe. Everyone is shocked when a “parent” kills their kids and it’s in a magazine. To me, it just makes sense that for all these stories where the children are murdered by their “parents,” there are a lot more stories where the “parents” threatened or even attempted to murder their children. My “parents” didn’t want to go to jail. Logically, there must be far more Filicide Survivors out there than completed Filicides.

If you reference the one small study I could find of children immediately after the fact (included in Supporting Information), it discusses some key distinctions and themes that emerged. The children displayed age appropriate verbal abilities, were protective of their “parents,” and extremely hesitant to open up about the Filicide attempts. The stakes are certainly higher when your life is on the line, so it seems like to me (just as with us), you may see less delinquency and more perfectionism in Filicide Survivors than in child abuse that did not rise to the level of death threats and murder attempts. In high school, when my French teacher asked me for an explanation for why I took a handful of pills, I told her that some boys chose two girls for a music video but I wasn't one of them. She said she wasn’t sure what that story had to do with my hospitalization. She didn’t buy it. She was right. Beth was actively suggesting to me I kill myself as a solution to life problems at the time. I did not speak a word about abuse in my home to my French teacher. There were moments I reached out, such as begging friends online to help if I could get messages out in the middle of an abusive experience, but I also protected Beth and Gary at other times, particularly with adult figures.

I’m sure many of you are confused as to why Gary and Beth Balcom would make up the strangulation and murder of Rose by a man. It doesn’t make any sense, right? There were cameras pointing at Rose’s only apartment door. No one entered that night. The investigators flat-out stated to Gary that Rose was not murdered. I have audio of the investigators saying I seemed to be the only reasonable one in the family. I think they push the murder narrative for two reasons. First, they must know, somewhere deep down, that Rose died as a result of their severe abuse and gross negligence. If a man murdered her, that allows them to shift responsibility off of themselves in their own minds.. Second, Beth Balcom thrives on sympathy and attention. If Rose was murdered by an “illegal alien” as they stated, they could become conservative media stars. The parents of a beautiful blond brutally murdered by an “illegal alien.” It has the makings of a national headline in today’s political climate. The murder of their daughter would generate more shock and sympathy for Beth. I hate saying this, but I do believe Beth Balcom always wanted a dead daughter for sympathy. She couldn’t do it herself because she would go to jail. But she could suggest suicide to her teen daughter, hoping to get the result another way. When I was in my mid twenties and struggling, I took pills again with the intention of ending my life. Judith and her boyfriend, along with a friend of my own, visited me in the hospital. They were shocked when they saw Beth looking happy. She was so cheery and smiley while I was hospitalized that it looked like it could have been my wedding day. They both asked me what the hell was wrong with my “mother.” We were used to it, but it took someone else calling it out for me to realize her behavior was odd. I do believe she wanted a dead daughter for sympathy. Well, now she has one and I’m not going to let that go.

The study I found also highlights, “I’m alive thanks to my siblings.” That is quite possibly true. My siblings and I were in battle together. Beth was chasing me around the kitchen island with a chef’s knife when Judith yelled at her to stop, at which point she was then chased into the basement where she hid behind a locked door. As you can see from Judith’s list, Rose kicked Beth to stop her from beating Judith with a boat paddle (Rose was never aggressive unprompted). There were many instances of us jumping in to protect one another from severe abuse, when possible. Rose used to be the one to bring me ice packs and comfort me when I was hurt or abused. It took me twenty years to realize I had a severe case of Survivor’s Guilt over Rose, beginning while she was still alive. I spent decades trying to come up with ways to get her away from our “parents,” but all of my attempts failed. I would make comments to myself such as “I should go back,” “I left Rose,” and “but it could have been me,” any time someone suggested she was not my responsibility. Going back may have meant we both could have perished. But I still felt the obligation. I would frequently feel I didn’t deserve happiness because Rose couldn’t have it. What if mental health professionals recognized Survivor’s Guilt in Filicide Survivors sooner? Due to sibling bonds, Survivor’s Guilt is likely to be quite strong in a Filicide Survivor, similarly (or possibly even greater) to that of a military Veteran, where more frequently identified. Some Filicide Survivors may have lost a sibling in childhood and spent even more time than I have suffering this guilt.

There’s a concept I recently learned applies to me. Psychological double bind. If I stay silent, I betray myself and my sister’s memory. If I speak, I feel conditioned guilt and fear-based reactions for sharing the truth. I believe I am not finding studies on adult survivors of Filicide for a few reasons. The first is the shame we feel when we speak the truth. The second is adult children protecting the reputations of their parents. And third because we’re so tired of not being believed, that a lot of us have given up trying to explain. Well, Gary and Beth Balcom are responsible for the untimely death of my sister, and I am not giving up.