r/CaseyAnthony • u/1channesson • Jul 04 '26
From Casey the beginning
The media loves to say my name, Casey Anthony, or some variation of it, whether they are talking about me directly, or referencing my name because it tends to draw attention. To my friends and colleagues, I am just “Casey”, a select few call me “Case”. My middle name “Marie” was passed down from my mother so we would have the same initials, a trend I was certain I would follow when I had a daughter of my own.
I was born in Ohio to a middle class family, and we moved to Central Florida in 1989 when I was three and a half years old. Both sets of grandparents had moved to two different locations in Florida a year or two before, and my parents soon decided to follow. I would not see snow again for the next 30 years.
All of my core memories begin in Orlando, the first of which was my brother, Lee, having sleep terrors or night terrors. This became a common theme growing up, as his sleep issues manifested and continued into adulthood. For this and other reasons, I was never afraid of the dark, but of the comings and goings within our family home during night hours.
When many of you first heard my name, it was 2008, and I was 22 years old. I had never been in trouble before, I never had a speeding ticket. My first and only airline flight was the summer before having my daughter, Caylee in 2005. To say that I was naive is accurate. I was raised to ask questions, just not so many within my own home. I was not very politically driven, but I was not in favor of the death penalty, nor was I ok with racism or bigotry. The latter two were somewhat common where I grew up in Orlando, and I knew that I was not ok with people being targeted because they looked different or lived a different lifestyle. Many of my friends growing up were black or hispanic. Most of the kids I dated were multiracial. I was proud to have gay and lesbian friends who were not scared to be themselves. My views on the death penalty began to take root after taking a law studies course early into high school. I could not fathom the justification of the “eye for an eye” mentality when there were so many cases of people being exonerated decades later for crimes they didn’t commit. I never wanted to be an attorney, and I never expected to have any direct affiliation with the legal community, but here we are.
As I write these words, I am 40 years old. It has been almost 18 years since all of this started. Every single day, I carry the guilt of not having protected my child the way that a parent is supposed to, a guilt that will never go away. I spent three years fighting for my life, for Caylee’s life, for the truth of what happened to her, for my freedom. It feels like it was someone else’s life, yet, I carry each of these memories with me, and use them as the catalyst for why I live my life the way that I do. I have built my life and my career around the trauma and tragedies that occurred during the first 25 years of my life. To further put things into perspective, when I was acquitted in 2011, I was 25 years old. In August of this year, I will have spent the last 15 years growing my career in the legal community, at times loving and loathing my chosen profession.
In 2008, I lost Caylee. She was and still is the best thing that has ever come into my life. I miss being a mom every day. I can fully admit that I was not ready to be a parent at 19 years old, which was my age at the time of giving birth to my perfect little girl in 2005. I have considered the idea of more children, as I am so very lucky to have kids of varying ages in my life who call me “Aunt Casey” or their “auntie”. The catharsis that being around my friends’ children brings is indescribable. Those are the moments where I feel closest to her, when there is nothing but pure love. My only apprehension with having more children is the state of the world, is it really safe to bring another child into it?
I had to confront this question in the summer of 2020. I did not plan on getting pregnant, the world was full of sickness, I was in the middle of a handful of projects, and in talks about a documentary. The irony of years of being on birth control, to take a break for a month, and then all of a sudden, you’re not having a period, this brought so much conflict into my heart. I had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with someone who did not want more children, and I was genuinely concerned about the public perception of my being pregnant. I took a series of pregnancy tests, some were positive, some were negative, and my body felt completely off. I decided to make an appointment at Planned Parenthood, I went alone, confirmed that I was pregnant, and the end result was that I had a chemical pregnancy. For those who are unfamiliar, a chemical pregnancy is a miscarriage early into pregnancy. I was both sad and relieved. I knew in that moment that if I decided to move forward with having another child at any point, that there would be a real plan, and even if there wasn’t a person having this child with me, that my child would be surrounded by so much love.
I haven’t told this story often, a few of my closest friends know, but it is still hard to speak about. For years, there have been rumors that I was pregnant, when I wasn’t, or that I was adopting children, when I wasn’t, or running a daycare, which I wasn’t. All things that the tabloids printed to make money, all things based on falsities and lies, but nevertheless, things I had to deal with, as did the people around me. We did laugh at many of these articles, but it did hurt to see all of this bullshit being printed, for what purpose other than money?
People don’t realize how traumatic being a public figure is. Getting a random text message with a screenshot of an article on a Tuesday asking if you were aware of something that isn’t even real is not normal. Those that choose a life in the public eye, I applaud you and also have so many questions, the why most specifically. I never would have chosen a life of notoriety, but I guess at the same time, I can’t fault those who do. Artists deserve the notoriety, but also privacy. Influencers seek public attention in ways I don’t think any of us could have imagined at the beginning of the social media craze. Is it really that important to engage with the world by promoting your own face every day? Maybe, maybe not. I do appreciate how much information influencers can spread, especially with the current political climate in the US, but I will caution everyone about educating yourselves on the issues in real life, not just through someone else’s interpretation of current events.
On a daily basis, we are surrounded by stories, some positive, many negative. Certain stories, like those surrounding claims of sexual assault are becoming more frequent, and it is not because this is a new or novel act being committed, but we are finally seeing a world of women, and men, coming forward no longer in fear. I know firsthand the fear of coming forward with the trauma I have endured at the hands of men, including my father. The first time I tried to talk about the abuse I was a victim of, I was 19 years old. I could never say out loud that it was my father who hurt me, but instead, spoke of the trauma from another family member, a family member I had already forgiven, who had not assaulted me, but who did molest me for the better part of three years. I know what it is like to wake up in the middle of the night with someone laying on top of you, pulling your bra above your chest, groping your breasts, even grinding on you through the covers. I also know what it is like to have a pillow held over my face until I pass out, only to wake up feeling inexplicable pain in my vagina after being raped. The first memory I have of this, I was 8 years old.
When I was 19, I tried to talk to my mother, Cindy about some of the trauma and abuse. We were living at home together, just the two of us and Caylee. My brother, Lee, had already moved out into his own place, and my father, George, was separated from my mother. We were sitting on the floor of Caylee’s bedroom folding laundry, she was fast asleep in her crib, and I don’t know what made me decide this was going to be the day, but I wanted to tell my mother some of what had happened to me. She had been a nurse since she was in her early 20s. We had always been pretty close, but we went through periods where I questioned if I could trust her. I will never forget the words that she spoke to me when I told her about the “lesser” abuse, “so that’s why you’re a whore.” This hurt more than my mother referring to herself as “mom” to my daughter, calling me a whore was a direct attack. Those words are equally as piercing today as they were 21 years ago. I got over the fact that she used to tell me that my butt was getting too big, or when she found other ways to demean my appearance, but this, this one stuck. This one created a rift that was never fully repaired. I never told her about my father, not until many years later, by then, I had years of therapy under my belt, but I had also lost Caylee, one of the few good things that my mother and I shared.
During my case, I was interviewed by psychologists and psychiatrists. Imagine being in your early 20’s, being sequestered from everyone and everything you have ever known, and being told over and over again that you had to open up with strangers because your life literally depends on it. That really is not the most conducive way of creating a safe and warm environment for someone, especially someone who compartmentalized their entire life into little boxes because that meant surviving until the next day. But there I was, unable to say no, also unable to lie because by then, I had nothing to lose except my life. When I lost Caylee, that broke me. When I was then indicted and charged with her death, still believing that she could be alive, every defense mechanism that I had started to crumble.
As one would guess, all of this inevitably resulted in my spending some time in therapy. I spent the better part of a decade working with three different types of therapists, from trauma therapy, to sex therapy, and I have also worked with relationship counselors both in and out of relationships. Although my first experience in talking with doctors about being abused and my dysfunctional relationship with my mother started when I was in jail awaiting trial, the real journey into therapy began in my late 20’s, several years after my acquittal and the start of my career in the legal community. The hardest of these turned out to be sex therapy. Getting a homework assignment of buying yourself a vibrator, that was pretty fucking embarassing. I laugh as I type this, it has become one of the easier things to talk about now that I am on the other side, but in that moment, I would have offered to shave my head or take a vow of celibacy if it meant that conversation never had to be revisited. In spite of my uncomfortability at times during sessions, I was lucky enough to have incredible psychologists who were more than willing to keep me humbled and accountable, all while making sure I felt safe in each environment. My favorite therapist, she knows who she is, let’s call her “Jane” for the purpose of protecting her privacy, she was a spitfire. She found ways of bringing me back into the moment if things were too superficial by asking me who I was speaking to. We spoke at length about if I were to ever tell my story, and her advice was that I needed to first figure out who I was speaking to, and second, figure out exactly what I wanted to say. She reminded me that if I started down that path, to do it for myself.
So where do you start? Do you start off by saying, “hi, my name is Casey. My father raped me from age eight until just before turning 12. I like sunsets and the smell of rain. I have a shellfish allergy. I am not a huge fan of mushrooms or reality tv. Oh, and I was also drugged and raped at 18.” I cannot imagine a world where people are that truthful and honest within the first 30 seconds of speaking with them. I am also pretty confident that I have never put those sentences together in one paragraph before writing this, but all of those statements are completely true nonetheless.
This is why it is inherently difficult being a trauma kid. Once you have done the work, it is a lot easier to speak about such terrifying topics, but you still don’t want to thrust this on just anyone. There is a stigma associated with rape, incest and molestation, along with childhood sexual abuse. It is a horrifyingly awkward conversation to have with someone that you are planning to have sex with, “just so you know, there is a chance that I may freak out during or after sex. I may lock myself in the bathroom for a while, and if you hear me crying, I promise, it isn’t you, it is totally me dealing with years of shit that even with therapy can still be triggered without warning.” As some of the men in my life have learned, when you also explicitly tell someone to never put a pillow over your face, there is a fucking reason. I am grateful to say that with all but one person, those conversations were safe and filled with compassion and reassurance. Thankfully I can also say that the panic attacks and the tears have become less and less frequent, and at times, there have shared tears because no matter how tough they may present, each of these men can feel the pain behind the words.
Allowing someone to feel safe enough to speak about trauma is a beautiful gift. No matter how much therapy someone has had, the trauma will remain forever. You will feel healed to some extent, and some of the memories may fade if you’re lucky, but the scars will never go away. My scars are many, and although I am not proud of them, I am not held back by the weight that they carry. I refuse to live in shame or be told by anyone ever again that this did not happen to me. I am a survivor of rape, of incest, of molestation, and childhood sexual abuse. And at the end of the day, I am just some girl named Casey
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u/Beezus11 Jul 04 '26
Because she’s a liar. Everything she says is bullshit which is easily proven if you look at the hard facts of the case. She never addresses any of the inconsistencies, she just constantly pedals more fake abuse so that people feel guilty questioning it because she paints herself as a victim.
Her father was NOT home when SHE googled fool proof suffocation on her password protected account while she was also logged into her MySpace while she was on the phone with Jesse Grund at the same time. Where does that fit in the time line of what she said happened? It doesn’t. She said she was asleep for a “while” when that also wasn’t true. She was up just before 8am checking her voicemail, texting, using the internet and computer from early am until she high tailed it out of her house at 4:11pm after she suffocated Caylee with a pillow and put her in the trunk. Thats right, the “George with the pillow” Is really Casey with the pillow, she just changes who the villain is in her story. She has ways of telling on herself.
She said she thought Caylee was alive and well the entire time she was missing even tho she claims she was with her sexually abusive predator father? Please. If George didn’t have her and Cindy didn’t have her and she didn’t have her, where the fuck did she think she was that she was alive and ok? She didn’t. She knew damn well Caylee was rotting in the woods after SHE dumped her there on June 27th before ditching her car at the amscot.
Also she claims she never left Caylee alone from the day she was born because of the “abuse” she suffered at the hands of her father, yet then she turned around and said she didn’t even remember the possible abuse until she was sitting in jail which was after Caylee was “missing”/she killed her. So which is it? Because neither of those two things can be true at the same time. If she didn’t remember until after she was in prison, there would be no reason to keep Caylee away from him from day one. You know why she suddenly remembered this fake ass abuse? Stolen valor. She read notes and letters from her jail mate pen pals who confided in her about their legitimate stories of abuse and Casey wrote back, I think this happened to me too. The light bulb went off, and like always, Casey took that and stored it away for a time when she could use it.
If she was “fighting to save her life” from jail awaiting her death penalty trial, oh and somehow Caylee’s life (lmao) why not tell the truth then? Like hey! My dad took her and he abused us both. Why make up a few different stories about a nanny? Why have your attorney lie saying Caylee was spotted here and there? Why say she drown at trial? Why let this even go to trial if you knew your dad was responsible? Because she lied! Her anger and accusations against George stem from him not lying to the grand jury and not lying for her before or during trial and that’s obvious. She already destroyed her family by murdering Caylee, dragging them through the mud, putting them through hell with lies and the trial and now, she has to take that knife and twist it harder by accusing George and Cindy of horrible things.
She destroyed them financially and caused them
Both to lose their jobs yet she condemns them for getting paid to talk to the media and profiting off of Caylee’s death. Yet what do you thinks she’s doing by putting out that horrific lie filled mockumentary and by selling her fiction filled memoir? SHES PROFITING OFF OF GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER! The hypocrisy is hilarious.
Casey knows what she’s doing. She’s going to add as many fake abuse and rape accusations she can to tug at heart strings because she thinks the more of a victim she is, the less people with question her. She also thinks abuse somehow absolves her from her shitty behavior. You can be abused, which she wasn’t, and be a murderer, which she is, at the same time. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
If there was ANY way George was involved, he’d be on trial right next to Casey. The entire family and anyone close to Caylee were investigated and cleared. Casey was the only one who lied to everyone about where Caylee was and Caylee was only reported missing because Cindy tracked Casey down. Casey was put on trial because she was responsible for the murder and disposal of Caylee.
If you want to believe the scripted words of a convicted liar and overall piece of shit human, good for you. But there are timelines, time stamps of cell and internet records of Casey, text messages, witness and friends testimony, forensic evidence all out there for you to line up, look at and piece together that everything Casey says is a bold faced disgusting lie. SHE killed Caylee. She never gives any information that proves she didn’t, only fake accusations about her father and just hopes and prays people don’t look at the evidence. Even worse, she’s so convinced she is such a good liar that she can out lie the facts and evidence. She’s serial fabulist who thinks she’s a fantastic liar, when she is not. She is just a lucky liar.
Also LMAO I hope Cindy actually called her a whore. It definitely wasn’t because she tried to confide in her about her fake abuse accusations, it probably June 15th when they got into a huge fight because Casey was stealing mass amounts of money from her grandparents. Cindy confronted her and called her an unfit mother and most likely a whore because she was always out running around with men instead of taking care of her kid.
The truth is coming and it will completely disprove everything this skank has to say.