Help Me Prove It

On 9 February 2015, a 19-year-old woman named Alecia Faith Pennington published a video to YouTube during which she described a bizarre conundrum: According to Pennington, she lacked the basic documentation to engage in any typical aspects of American life (such as driving, obtaining employment, traveling, or attending school) because her parents had intentionally obstructed the creation of any official records of her existence:

Without a birth certificate, Social Security number, medical records, or a school record, Pennington stated, she was effectively excluded from graduating to legal adulthood despite having reached that milestone more than a year earlier:

The chain of events as relayed by Pennington did not necessarily beggar belief as described. According to the 19-year-old, she was born at home (with a midwife present), and

no birth certificate was issued. She claimed her parents never filed for a Social Security number on her behalf, and that she never attended any school (public or private). Furthermore, Pennington said she was never hospitalized and thus lacked the medical records that would have been generated had such a visit occurred.

A blog post made by a woman named Lisa Pennington in September 2014 relayed a scenario that matched Alecia's account. In that writing, the elder Pennington didn't admit to withholding corroboration of her daughter's identity; she described that her child had suddenly left home at age 18 for unexplained reasons:

We did have a meeting with our daughter about a week after she left and it became obvious when we agreed to give her everything she was asking for that she did not intend to come home. She had sent us a list of things she wanted to change at home, but because we agreed to all of the changes and she still won't come home ... it seems there must be something deeper there that she isn't telling us.

I ask myself, "How can I help her if she won't tell me the truth?"