On Thursday, December 28, 2023, G. (Gypsy) Rose Blanchard-Anderson was released from prison 8 years after being sentenced to spend 10 years in prison for the murder of her mother, Claudine Blanchard. Since her release, she has been in the spotlight as many praise her for standing up to her mother’s abuse and taking action.
Rose Blanchard was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, also known as MSP. Her mother, Claudine Blanchard, believed that her daughter had various illnesses even if she did not have them in reality. This led to her drugging Rose for illnesses such as leukemia and muscular dystrophy when she was completely healthy. Moreover, Rose was forbidden to tell anyone her truth and her mother kept her sheltered from the outside world. Many believe Claudine wanted the attention of the people around her and the public in general and to achieve this, she used her daughter.
After years of abuse, 23-year-old G. Rose Blanchard plotted to kill her mom and convinced her online boyfriend at the time, Nicholas Godejohn, to travel from Wisconsin to Missouri to take part. Nicholas Godejohn killed Claudine and during sentencing, he was sentenced to life in prison while Rose was sentenced to 10 years for being a part of orchestrating the plan to kill her mother. Soon, Rose’s story spread around the U.S. and adaptations of her story through TV series such as “The Act” brought her situation to mainstream media.
Back to the present day, Rose Blanchard, now goes by G. Rose Blanchard-Anderson after marrying Ryan Anderson, someone she had met and connected with through a prison pen-pals program. The days before and after her release saw an upsurge in people praising Rose for her actions and escape from abuse. She soon rose to fame and conducted various interviews alongside her husband.
However, should she receive this newfound fame? Rose is trying to start over after years of abuse and trauma, and as a victim of abuse, it is extremely unhealthy for Rose and her situation to be in the spotlight. Someone who went through what Rose did should be getting the time and space away from the spotlight that they need to recover and get therapy.
Removing Rose from the public eye will ease the public of the burden of choosing to be empathetic while inadvertently glorifying murder. Her situation was horrible but even Rose herself recognizes that she could have gone about the situation in a different way. “‘I want to make sure that people in abusive relationships do not resort to murder…It may seem like every avenue is closed off but there is always another way. Do anything, but don’t take this course of action,’” says Rose Blanchard in a recent interview with People Magazine. Rose recognizes here that she went wrong, and the public should too because public glorification of Rose’s actions may undo the progress she has made so far to recover from abuse.
Some may want to platform Rose for murdering her abuser and use that as a reason to make her a notable public figure. But this would also be a meaningless reason as the burden of actually committing the murder falls on Nicholas Godejohn. “I talked him into it,” said Rose during her trial. It is important to note that while Rose was released in 8 years, Godejohn is serving a life sentence for his actions and will never have the opportunity to walk free and start a new life. This shows that if people think the murder was justified and that Rose should be praised for killing her mom, they then must praise Godejohn as well, which most people don’t feel comfortable doing.
Overcoming trauma should not be met with fame but with comfort, something that is in the spotlight does not offer. People like Rose, who have gone through a traumatic and abusive experience should not immediately be thrust into stardom. So no, G. Rose Blanchard should not be a celebrity who is glorified for the murder of her abuser and instead, she should be given space away from the spotlight to start a new life.
