Details about Taylor Parker’s childhood and ‘trauma’ you should know after Maternal Instinct

Netflix’s new true documentary Maternal Instinct tells the shocking true story of Taylor Parker, but it doesn’t give much information about her childhood and background. So, here’s everything you need to know.

The film revisits the shocking crime that rocked Texas in 2020, when Parker murdered 21-year-old expecting mother Reagen Simmons-Hancock and cut her unborn baby out of her womb. After pretending she had just given birth to the baby herself, she was taken arrested, found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death on 9th November 2022.

Inside Taylor Parker’s childhood after Maternal Instinct

Taylor was born on 12th August 1992. She grew up with he mum Shona Prior, dad Mark Morton and brother Zachary. Taylor went to Chapel Hill Elementary School in Mount Pleasant and did basketball, baseball, and cheerleading, but started having stomach issues in the third grade, which stopped her from going to school, Prior told the court as per KTAL.

The teenager returned to school in fourth grade, but her parents divorced shortly after, in 2005, when she was 12. They tried sharing custody and letting Taylor and Zachary stay in the house while they switched, but it didn’t last long because Morton would reportedly refuse to leave, which would lead to fights in front of the children.

Credit: Netflix

After that, Taylor’s dad moved in with his mother, Peggy Hebert. Prior told the court she was a “heavyset lady” who “used food as comfort” which caused Taylor to gain lots of weight. “She tried to comfort Taylor in the same manner, and she just – she gained a lot of weight. She’s 13, and she gained it really quick,” she said.

By this time, Taylor was 14 and just going into high school. “She didn’t want to be that heavy. She wanted to be skinny like the rest of her friends, and she just couldn’t,” Prior said. However, Taylor told Master Social Worker Lauren Elmore her parents were oblivious and did nothing to help her with her emotional and weight issues, KTAL reports.

Taylor Parker was sexually assaulted at 13 years old

Elmore was hired during the trial to assess Parker’s “childhood trauma” and determine its impact. Taylor told her she was sexually assaulted by a family friend when she was 13, at a “drug house” where her dad was allegedly visiting a girlfriend. However, her brother said he didn’t remember Taylor ever being at that house.

Most Read

Oliver Tree shared heartbreaking details of his money and will just weeks before his tragic death

‘I don’t remember’: Brazil bungee staff speak for first time as woman dies in horror jump

Bungee jumper who died after ropes weren’t attached was still alive when found, nurse shares

Taylor claimed that her grandmother took her to the doctor she worked for at the time in an after-hours appointment, and overheard her telling the doctor not to report the assault. Peggy’s good friend Kim Basinger told the court she was very protective of her granddaughter and was always a “stabilising” influence on her.

Hebert passed away in 2018, but Basinger was still a bit part of Taylor’s life. She said she always thought of her as her own granddaughter, but decided to have nothing to do with her after September 2020, when Parker asked her to pose as her real grandmother to confirm a fake story to her boyfriend, Wade.

Credit: Netflix

She didn’t finish high school and had a baby at 17

Taylor dropped out of high school after getting pregnant just after turning 17. She welcomed daughter Emersyn with her boyfriend at the time, Donald Whiteside, but Prior testified that he was never involved. She said she only ever met him once in 2009, before the baby was born, and they didn’t have much of a relationship.

Shortly after, Taylor and her aunt Katie went to Tijuana to get gastric bypass surgery because her doctor said her obesity was starting to cause heart problems. “She was overweight,” Prior said. “She was having little TIAs, like a little mini, and she needed to drop weight and drop all of the weight. And I believe at that time, she weighed about 300 when all of those issues started coming up.”

She welcomed her second child, a son called Trey, in 2014 with her husband Tommy Wacasey. She was 21 at the time. In 2015, Taylor had to have surgery to find out the cause of the extreme pelvic pain and bleeding she had been experiencing. It was endometriosis, and she went on to have an ectopic pregnancy. After that, a doctor advised her to have a hysterectomy.

Prior told her daughter to go ahead with the surgery, and prosecutors said Taylor always blamed her for that. She had already had her tubes tied in 2014 after complications with preeclampsia in her second pregnancy and was looking for surrogates to have more children, but her mother didn’t know any of this.

For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

Featured image credit: Netflix