Gypsy Rose Blanchard says she’d still be abused if her mother were alive today

By Elizabeth Wagmeister and Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Gypsy Rose Blanchard says the first time she tasted freedom was not last week, when she walked out of a Missouri prison after serving eight and a half years for helping to kill her abusive mother.

The first time she tasted freedom, she says, was when she went to prison in the first place.

“For me, getting to prison was a chance to start a life for myself in terms of gaining independence from everyone,” she said in an interview with CNN on Thursday, ahead of the premiere of the Lifetime docuseries, “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.”

“Being able to just do something as simple as make friends for the first time, go out in the sun, enjoy a day with friends, socializing with other people my age,” she added. “It was definitely more freedom than I had ever felt before in my life living with my mother.”

Following her release on parole last week, Blanchard, 32, is finally experiencing true freedom.

Blanchard became the subject of tabloid fascination after her mother Dee Dee Blanchard was found stabbed to death in 2015 in their home near Springfield, Missouri. A disturbing Facebook post from Dee Dee’s account alerted authorities to the crime, and as more details emerged, investigators discovered a complex web of abuse, lies and tragedy.

Blanchard spent her childhood and early adulthood believing she suffered from a host of serious ailments, including leukemia, muscular dystrophy and asthma. In fact, she was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare syndrome in which a caregiver feigns or exaggerates illness in someone to elicit attention or sympathy.

For years, Dee Dee falsely convinced doctors, community members and even Blanchard herself that her daughter was seriously ill. She kept Blanchard in a wheelchair even though she could walk, put her through numerous surgeries she didn’t need and isolated her from the world, Blanchard has said in media interviews.

The environment was so unbearable that Blanchard said she saw no other way out but to get rid of her mother. In what she describes as an act of desperation, Blanchard convinced her then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to kill her mother as she slept. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2016, and prosecutors eventually sentenced her to 10 years in a plea deal upon considering her unique circumstances.

Godejohn was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He admitted to stabbing Dee Dee and said he only killed her because Gypsy asked him too, according to court records.

Court filings also show that Blanchard was in the home at the time of the killing and did nothing to stop it. But she said she doesn’t think she could have gone through with it if she had to do it alone.

“I don’t have that in my heart. If people knew me, they’d know that I can’t even so much just kill a fly,” she said. “It’s just not in my nature to have violence.”

She continued, “I think it’s very important for people to understand that I was brought to a breaking point. Me as I am, as an individual, I could never kill someone.”

Blanchard said she believes she would still be experiencing abuse if her mother was alive today. It’s possible that someone might have caught on to her mother’s deception eventually, she said, but likely not before her body succumbed to all the unnecessary medications and surgeries urged upon her by her mother.

“I think that if my mother were still here, I would still be under this abusive medical abuse that I was going through,” she said. “I don’t think that there would have been an end in sight for me.”

Now that she’s had years to reflect on her choices, Blanchard said she realizes there were other options besides killing her mother. But she feels like the system failed her: At the time, she felt stuck and that her life would never change as long as she was under her mother’s care.

“I realize that there are resources and things that are put in place to protect kids from going through what I went through,” she added. “Unfortunately I just fell through the cracks of all of it.”

Even after all she endured at the hands of her mother, Blanchard is coming around to forgiveness. If she could speak to her mother today, she said she would tell her she is sorry.

“She was not an evil woman. She was not a monster. She was just a sick woman, and she would have needed a lot of mental health care,” she said. “I see for who she is now, or who she was.”

But now, Blanchard is ready to move forward.

She has plenty to keep her busy: Aside from being newly married and reunited with her family, she’s promoting a new Lifetime docuseries and her book “Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom,” slated to publish on January 9. She said she hopes to use her platform to help others who are facing similar situations.

“I’m gonna do my best to really do right by anyone that has gone through what I have went through,” she said.

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