The Daughter of Diane Downs

Becky says she always knew she was adopted, but when she turned 8, she started asking questions about her biological mother. "My mom told me that she was in prison, that there was a book about her and when I was old enough, she would tell me more," Becky says.

Three years later, Becky tricked a babysitter into revealing the name of her birth mother: Diane Downs. Becky went to a bookstore to look her up and was shocked at what she found. "I flipped through the pictures, and there was a picture of Diane sitting at a table with her hand up, and her fingers were eerily the same as mine—like identical—and it scared me," she says. "I slammed the book shut, and I left."

When she was 16, a boyfriend showed Becky the TV movie Small Sacrifices starring Farrah Fawcett, which is based on her mother's life. It was then, Becky says, that the reality of who Diane was truly sunk in. "She's not a mother," Becky says. "She's a monster."

From there, Becky says she went into a downward spiral. "I started drinking, doing drugs, sleeping around," she says. "I really was just trying to find love from anywhere I could. I ended up getting pregnant when I was 17 years old."