Katherine Reddick, who wrote the scathing obituary about her abusive mother Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick with the help of her brother, is finally opening up about why they went the route they did.

Katherine Reddick Opens Up About Mom’s Scathing Obituary

Months after the obituary appeared in Nevada’s Reno Gazette-Journal, Reddick says she feels no regrets and has received an outpouring of support from people who read the obituary. "We got a lot of courage–'thank you for the honesty'–that it was nice to see that people don't always have to lie on an obituary just because it's customary to say good things about someone," she told HuffPost Live. "She was an incredibly awful person, not just to us, but basically anyone that knew her."

Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick’s Obituary

“Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick born Jan 4, 1935 and died alone on Aug. 30, 2013. She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible. While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit.

On behalf of her children whom she so abrasively exposed to her evil and violent life, we celebrate her passing from this earth and hope she lives in the after-life reliving each gesture of violence, cruelty, and shame that she delivered on her children. Her surviving children will now live the rest of their lives with the peace of knowing their nightmare finally has some form of closure.

Most of us have found peace in helping those who have been exposed to child abuse and hope this message of her final passing can revive our message that abusing children is unforgivable, shameless, and should not be tolerated in a "humane society." Our greatest wish now, is to stimulate a national movement that mandates a purposeful and dedicated war against child abuse in the United States of America.”

How Did The Obituary Come About?

After learning of her mother’s death, Reddick and her brother discussed how they would go about memorializing the woman they had no love for. Reddick, who has long been an activist against child abuse in the country, decided that she would write it and that it would serve her cause.

"My brother and I spoke to each other by phone, and after we hung up it was like a day or so, and we both called each other again and we both thought the same thing: who's going to write the obituary? And what did we want to do with it? And so I said, 'if I'm going to do it, I'll do it. But I want it to have a purpose,’” she told The Huffington Post.

"And so our purpose was really to re-ignite the discussion about child abuse in this country, and how our society has neglected to do much about it to help it."

Admittedly happy that her mother is no longer alive, Reddick is also glad to report that through the obituary she’s successfully called attention to the child abuse that plagued her and her siblings’ younger years.

– Chelsea Regan

Get Uinterview's FREE iPhone App For Daily News Updates here.

Get the FREE Uinterview iPad app here and watch our videos anywhere.