Hulu's new two-part documentary, The Nightmare Upstairs: What Happened to Ty and Bryn, examines the true story of two Utah siblings who barricaded themselves inside a bedroom for 54 days in protest of court-mandated reunification therapy with their father. The documentary, streaming now, features never-before-seen footage, police interviews and court records, chronicling the bitter custody battle involving Ty and Brynlee Larson, then aged 15 and 12.
During the standoff, Ty documented their isolation through viral TikTok livestreams. In one video from January 2023, he said: 'My own word does not matter, and they don’t believe my truth. The court system isn’t trying to save us; nobody’s trying to keep us safe. I am the one that’s going to have to choose my own safety.' The siblings made national news after they barricaded themselves in an upstairs bedroom in their mother Jessica Zahrt’s house to protest a court order seeking to reunite them with their father, Brent Larson, whom they had accused of physical, mental and sexual abuse.
In the documentary, Ty is shown placing dressers and other heavy objects against the bedroom door before drilling wood planks across it. He also reveals an assortment of food, including ramen, stashed in the bathroom, which he describes as their 'cooking area.' Speaking to People, Ty said he got the idea from a high school criminal justice class: 'If I barricaded, they couldn’t do anything because it wasn’t criminal. I thought, “What if I just locked myself in my room with a bunch of food, everything I need, and then I livestream it so everybody sees it. What are they going to do?”' He added that during their isolation, they missed their mother, who would try to bribe them out every day, but they refused.
Brent Larson has denied abusing his children, claiming instead that their extreme response was due to 'parental alienation' caused by their mother. Parental alienation is a term for when a child refuses a relationship with a parent due to manipulation by the other parent, though it is not recognised as an official medical or psychiatric disorder. Zahrt disputed the accusations, telling ProPublica: 'I literally had to wrap my brain around what I was even being accused of.' Brent has not been criminally charged in relation to the abuse allegations.
Years before the case made headlines, the children were evaluated by clinical psychologist Monica Christy. According to People, Christy testified during a custody trial that Ty told her about how 'his father fondled [him] when they got in bed' to 'scare him, or to make him frightened of things.' She also recalled Brynlee being 'adamant about being upset with things that he had done to her.' Christy testified against Brent’s allegations of parental alienation, stating she 'didn’t have any evidence' of anyone directing the children to think a certain way. When asked if the children seemed to have legitimate fear, she replied: 'Yes, they did.'
ProPublica reported that in 2018, Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services found that Brent had sexually and emotionally abused his children, describing the abuse as 'severe and chronic.' State records seen by People stated that Brynlee was seven when she first told her mother about the alleged sexual abuse. Zahrt filed a report with the authorities.
