Munchausen by proxy abuse is a form of medical child abuse where a caregiver, typically a mother, fabricates, exaggerates, or induces illness in a child for their own emotional gratification, attention, and sympathy. This abuse is characterized by intentional deception and is fundamentally about power and control rather than just attention-seeking. The abuse often involves unnecessary medical procedures, medications, and treatments that can be life-threatening, and it frequently co-occurs with other forms of abuse including psychological, emotional, and educational neglect. Despite its severity, this abuse is rarely diagnosed and prosecuted, with most perpetrators going unpunished due to systemic failures in the medical and legal systems, including doctors' reluctance to question parents, lack of specific laws against this abuse, and the difficulty of detecting such deliberate deception.
Munchausen Investigator: How Moms Get Away With Child Abuse | Andrea DunlopHinzugefügt:
The doctor is the weapon in these cases.
Our country's like lost its moral compass completely.
>> How do you cause that? How do you cause a premature birth?
>> Lots of ways, right?
>> You mentioned earlier like nonprofits.
They're just magnets for these people.
>> She was really exploiting her son after his death in a way that is really chilling. Hospitals are not private spaces.
>> I don't care if you see my wee wee.
>> Doctors that work in pediatrics are very aware of what happened in the Kowalsski case and some of these other lawsuits.
If I report this, is it going to end with me as the villain of a Netflix film getting constant death threats, harassment, being driven out of my career?
>> So, a a not so fun but super important topic today. Medical child abuse, which is a I have to say a heck of a thing to become an expert in and has to be kind of emotionally exhausting investigating this for a living. What do you think?
>> It is. Um, you know, I will say interestingly in the show we are uh expanding in our upcoming season to covering other cases of child abuse that are not medical child abuse because I have found that there is actually so much crossover with how these are being treated and specifically with their intersection uh with the medical system um and in the rise of misinformation about medical everything is really affecting both spheres. Um but obviously that is not that is that is not a more cheerful topic um in any way. But yeah, you know, I it's it's definitely emotionally heavy, but it is also very purposeful and intellectually very interesting. And I have gotten to meet so many incredible people in this work that I would never have met otherwise who have really dedicated their lives mostly in a pretty quiet unheralded way. Um and even you know in unfortunately increasingly in a way uh you know if you're talking about child abuse pediatricians in particular uh uh they are actually being excoriated in the media for their role in protecting children um completely unfairly um you know but who've dedicated their lives to doing some of the hardest work imaginable that I think most people would not survive a day in um in order to protect children and in order to make children's lives better and safer. And that is such a deeply gratifying thing to come into contact with in a time when I think it feels as though not to hyperbolize here, but our country's like lost its morph compass completely.
>> Well, yeah. I don't know if that's hyper.
>> Yeah. You know, I mean, I think like a as we sort of see all of these institutions that felt much much more trustworthy, I think Jordan, you know, when we were growing up, um, sort of crumble to see people who really have a strong purposeful ethic about what the right thing is to do, regardless of whether they get credit for it, regardless of whether they're punished for it, but like people who really have a backbone and a strong moral compass.
And I will say I've talked to so many of those people on the show. Um, you know, social workers, social workers, child abuse pediatricians, um, you know, crimes against children detectives, people who've really taken a lot of hits for doing the right thing in a difficult situation to protect a child. And I think that is something that I feel really lucky to come into contact with.
So yeah, there's a lot about the work that's really challenging. Um, but I will say it's never boring and I have a pretty deep fear of being bored in a job. Um, we were just talking about how this is not like a regular job, but um, you know, I I feel lucky that I found something, especially, you know, getting into my 40s that's really given me a a lot of purpose. So, >> I think we should back up and define what Munchhousen really is because one, it's rarely diagnosed. I think a lot of people know about it because Eminem talked about it once or something in a song lyric and people were like, "What is that?" Um, I actually think that might be where I heard of it first back in the '9s or whatever whatever that was. This is not something that's usually sort of in the zeitgeist. I mean, you're changing that, but I I think most people probably don't know what this is.
>> Yeah. Awareness of it is pretty low. And I think, you know, people's regular touch points. Yes. Eminem um song uh Cleaning Out My Closet. Uh he mentioned being a survivor. He hasn't talked about it. Um he or he mentions Munchous by proxy abuse I should say. He hasn't talked about it really publicly in any other wider context of like his experience of that. Um but he does of course allude to it. And then the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case is the one that really broke through uh that a lot of people know about. So that is the case for those who don't know of um a young woman who was in an abuse situation and ended up meeting a boyfriend online, conspired to murder her mother, Dei Blanchard. Um went to prison for seven years, got out a couple of years ago. Um and that was just like a huge story.
There was a couple of big media properties about it. There was an HBO documentary called Mommy Dud and Darus.
There was a Hulu docu or excuse me a Hulu series called The Act. um that was dramatized series, but it was just this like sort of massive moment of cultural recognition that was pretty mixed because of the sensational nature of that story. Um, and I think the the idea that this was sort of a one-off strange thing that happened to one person and and Gypsy Rose Blanchard has sort of become this monolith for the whole thing, which is obviously quite complicated, but um, yeah, I mean, so so much housing by proxy abuse and that is the terminology that uh, I and many other experts and professionals have have started to use. There's a whole sort of terminology debate but um because it uh it's mostly known by people who know it for the medical elements. So the basic definition is munchous and byroxy abuse is when a caregiver fabricates exaggerates or induces illness usually a mother usually with a small child um for the purposes of uh their own emotional gratification.
know to get attention, to get sympathy.
Uh there's often a lot of fundraising involved, but that's not thought to be really like the primary motivator. Um and you know, it's also referred to as medical child abuse. And when you're talking about it in a criminal context, you know, that's the terminology. The reason I've gone back to sort of using Munchous and Biproxy abuse as a more encompassing term is because it often involves other forms of abuse beyond the unnecessary surgeries and the you know treatments and the medications which those are obviously very serious. Those can be life-threatening. It's a particularly deadly form of abuse but it also encompasses a really deep and persistent psychological abuse, emotional abuse and educational abuse.
These kids are often not in school for long periods of time. they're not allowed to be around their peers in a normal way. Um, so it really is it really th those elements are so serious as well even if the medical abuse doesn't actually sort of reach the life-threatening threshold. I some of the treatment. So basically, correct me if I'm wrong. This is like let's say a mother says my kid has some kind of cancer and gives him chemotherapy and cancer drugs and a brain shunt or whatever. And the kid is miserable, but he doesn't actually have cancer. The whole thing is designed to like get her attention basically.
>> Correct. And you know, we see a lot of things that are uh fall into these kind of more mystery illnesses, a lot of neurological conditions, uh things that cannot be sort of tested one way or the other.
>> It's vague.
>> It's vague, right? It's like, oh, they have this. And you're like, okay, what's the definition of that? And I find myself Gemini chat gbing and it's like, it's a series of pain in various parts of your body. And it's like, okay, so the kid's saying that it hurts or like mom's saying the kids saying it hurts and he's getting drugs, >> right? Anything that's susceptible to a lot of uh interpretation on part of the caregiver is especially worrisome in these cases. So, you know, again, you see like and they often pick these sort of extremely vanishingly rare neurological disorders where there's like one expert in the entire country and so they go on this whole odyssey.
Um, you know, we do see other things that are a little bit more well-known.
Um, cystic fibrosis is one that comes comes up quite often. Um, partly because that's a pretty easy test to uh mess with. That's tested by putting a patch to collect a child's salt content of their sweat called sweat test. Um, and so we've had, you know, one of the first perpetrators that we covered on the show, Hopeubara, uh, you know, doctorred that test essentially with nasal spray that has salt in it. So there are there are things like that where they're actually messing with the test, but there are many other cases where, you know, they have some condition where there isn't a blood test or a genetic test or some, you know, really easy sort of black and white, this kid has it or they don't. And of course, there are a lot of things like that in medicine. You know, there are a lot of legitimate conditions that don't >> show up on a test like that. So unfortunately, I think most people don't realize how easy it is to pull this abuse off. You do not have to be a mastermind. You just have to be a person with Google. Right. Yeah. It's it's it's surprising to see that like the the baby will get a feeding tube because they'll be like he's not he's not thriving. It's like well you're starving him to death, but of course you're not telling the doctors that. So they get a feeding tube or an IV line and then the mom like there was a case on your show where a mom was caught putting feces in the baby's feeding tube. So like or something like that. And so the kid would constantly get really really really sick or they would put saline in there so the kid would turn blue and they'd be like, "Oh my god, he's choked." So then the ER would go, "Oh, we just had to suction out some fluid.
Why is he put Why is it there's so much fluid going in there?" And it's like, "I don't know. Something else must be wrong." And it's like, "No, you're putting freaking contact lens solution in the feed into the tube and like not telling anyone and rushing back." And it's So why do people abuse their kids like this? Cuz this isn't like parent can't control emotions, hits kid when they get angry. This is far more planned and sinister.
>> Yeah. I mean, I think this is there are a couple of elements about this abuse that make it particularly disturbing to people. And I want to highlight that this abuse is characterized by intentional deception. So, there are parents who overmedicalize their kids or take their kids on some weird medical odyssey because they're having anxiety because they've been, you know, come into contact with a strange antivax adjacent group that given them some bad ideas about what to do medically for their children. those things are harmful as well, but those have sort of different uh those are different situations that need to be handled differently. Um so I just want to say that because you know there is a lot of confusion about well oh does the does a parent really think their kid's sick? Do they are they having a delusion about their child being sick? Some parents do have that but that's not what proxy abuse is. It's exactly what you said.
It's very premeditated and it's very much a pattern of abuse, right? It's committed over a long period of time and it's extremely persistent and it looks different at different stages. So often you see, you know, uh premature birth, for example, that comes up a lot in these cases. Uh we strongly believe in most cases that's something that the parent causes. We have perpetrators who have fest up to that um to inducing birth early. Um and then of course the child has legitimate issues if a child's born early. um a lot of these feeding issues that you mentioned where they get a failure to thrive diagnosis, but they're just actually not feeding the child and they're lying about it at the doctor and they're saying, "Oh, the child is spitting up everything I feed them." And so then you end up with children having, you know, invasive procedures. Um you know, something this uh procedure called a nissan fund oblation comes up a lot where they're actually having, you know, a surgery to correct reflux that isn't happening. You get the feeding tubes. Um, so you get a lot of that stuff when when the children are young and then when they get a little bit older, you know, it might switch to something like a behavioral disorder or one of these neurological disorders. Um, and yeah, I think, you know, in terms of why people do it, what's been really interesting, Jordan, is as I've gotten into these other cases looking at, you know, physical abuse, abusive head trauma, which is another issue that there is just an unbelievable amount of misinformation about in the media right now, unfortunately. Um you know you see the degree to which even though Montous and by proxy is it is this strange and disturbing phenomenon.
Um it it is also they are abusers and they abuse for the same reasons right.
Um because they want power.
>> Why did Yeah. Tell >> Yeah. I think >> power. Yeah. Because it's like this is a baby. Like you want power over a baby. I I just don't understand.
>> Yeah. And it it doesn't it's taken me sort of a long time of sitting with this looking at different cases, you know, processing all this information to sort of to sort of come to this this revelation that that it's much more about power than I initially realized because I think you know the usual descriptions of this as though it's about uh you know the parent wanting sympathy or wanting attention and it is about those >> that's what I thought or they get a dopamine rush or something and they get addicted to that. I don't know.
>> Yeah. I mean and I think like most of us can understand the basic mechanism of what they're getting out of it right which is that like when you are even though we would never you know lie about our own health or lie about our child's health or abuse our child to get this but I think we can most of us can kind of understand what the basic reward here is right like when you have a crisis um especially if it's something around your children you know people rush to your aid and they um you know treat you differently and you might have a celebrity come visit your child in the hospital and you get sort of all this special attention and you get to sort of have a pass for anything that you're supposed to be doing in your real life.
You know, you see a lot of parents in these situations quitting their jobs and just devoting I have to be at my child's bedside. And so it's sort of this, you know, attention and special treatment and outpouring of love that you get for having a sick child. That's part of the reward. But the other element that I think has really become clear to me as I've seen, you know, and really talked to people who are survivors and have been in, you know, marriages with these perpetrators and really seen what these dynamics are like long term. And of course, I have, you know, a perpetrator in my family, which is why I got interested in this is that it's really about controlling the people around you.
So yes, it's about controlling the child, but obviously it starts when children are very young. And you know, I think it's the child is really an object. Like the child is and and that's where it shares a lot with other forms of abuse, right, is that they're not seeing the child as human particularly, and they're not really feeling a bond with that child. They're seeing the child as an object to get what they want, which is control over other people, control over their spouse, over their family members, over the doctors.
Um to sort of be able to pull one over on people. And I think, you know, part of the reason I've thought a lot about the gender dynamics of this abuse because it is such a high percentage, you know, something like 96.7% of offenders are female. Um, and I think the reason it shows up there is not because there's something specific about the female brain that makes people do this. I think it's because abusers abuse power where they're given power. And one of the only places we really give women unchecked power is over their children.
And so that's where they're going to, you know, that's where abusers who are female identifying are are going to leverage that power.
I see. Is if people have multiple kids, do they usually do it to all the kids or do they just like single one kid?
>> There's often an escalation as they have multiple kids. So in our, you know, season 6 case for example, um this is a pretty typical dynamic I've seen, especially when people have three children. Um the first child, Michelle, who was the survivor that we really explored the case with, um she was not subjected to any medical abuse that we know of. Uh then her younger sister Angeline was Lisa's first victim. Then what we saw in that case was, you know, her her second child who was born in in the late '9s, um went on this sort of typical pattern that we see in these cases where she was born very premature.
Um, again, that's something we believe Lisa caused from the uh, you know, from the feedback of of her sister who we we spoke to.
>> How do you cause that? How do you cause it for lots of ways, right? So, you see, um, you see people throwing themselves down the stairs. Um, you see, you know, Lisa was reported to have like tripped a whole bunch of times and kept kept falling on on her stomach and then went into premature labor. And, you know, obviously these things to some extent are going to be speculative. um it just doesn't seem likely that it that it's unrelated. Um you know, in in cases where people have access to medications, you know, a lot of perpetrators are nurses um or work as you know, medical assistants or somewhere in the medical field. It's not easy or it's not difficult to get one's hands on a drug that could make you go into labor prematurely. Most people wouldn't try and do that obviously, but that's not it's it's not actually so very complicated. So in this case, you know, um Angeline was born really dangerously premature. Um I think it was 26 weeks or something like that. Um but quite early, so did have some issues and then um and then Lisa, you know, was eventually caught poisoning her in the hospital.
She went septic times, which is having a a blood infection. Um and they they ended up catching her on um on video.
And so that was a quite clear-cut case.
You don't usually get that clear of evidence in these cases. It usually is this again sort of pattern of abuse. And it was in that case. They just happened to catch her.
>> Um, you know, in I believe it was something like over 50 instances of her poisoning the child through her.
>> They caught 50 on video.
>> Wow. So, she just didn't know the camera was in there and had the same routine every time.
>> How did it take 50 times before they were like, "Hey, she's wiping poop in the >> You know, that's a bit of a persistent question. This was in the late '9s when this happened. Okay. So, I you know it's not and every hospital has different uh you know things that they're equipped with in terms of video monitoring. They may not have the staff to monitor it while it's happening. They may be reviewing the tape later which is I believe >> yeah this is the era of like security video tapes. I was thinking it was recent cuz I'm like you can go into your whatever system and like when it's the third time and be like yo just sanity check this for me. This is three times.
is what the heck? And they're like, "Oh, there's poop in the tube." And then you can look at all the other. But like 50 times they're like, "Wait a minute. Call the security guy who has the key to the thing that we never opened. That's for like when the place gets robbed and look in this room if there's a camera in this room." And they're like, "Oh yeah, here's all pull all the tapes. Okay, she's doing it every time." So the '9s that makes way more sense because that just seemed otherwise if that happened now and it was 50 times. It's like you're you're filing a lawsuit for straight up negligently allowing this to happen 50 times on your premises without checking.
>> Well, unfortunately, Jordan, we have the exact opposite kind of lawsuit happening. Um, so there's a case in San Diego right now where it at Rainy Children's where parents are suing a hospital partly for using video surveillance. Um and there is a lot of push back from you know parents rights groups in particular about the idea of using this kind of video surveillance in in a hospital. Um and you know I think people should understand that hospitals for many reasons not just for abuse reasons but for many many reasons because of what happens in hospitals hospitals are not private spaces. Um they really they really can't be they can't be for doctors to be able to do their jobs. And so, um, unfortunately, I don't want my surgery to be not fil. I want you to film it because if I die, I want you to see the surgeon like leaving to go get a cup of coffee while my heart my chest is propped open. Like, I want the tape. I don't care if you see my wee wee, you know? Come on, man.
>> Right. And I mean there's you know you can have there are limited there's limited expectations of privacy within certain parts of a hospital but for many you know for many very understandable reasons um this is not a private space.
So um so yeah unfortunately we've got we've got the opposite kind of push back right now. But in this case you know so with Lisa you were asking about the progression uh you know of if they have multiple children. So, unfortunately, in Lisa's case, even though this was an extremely clear-cut case, um she got a very light sentence. She did eight months in a women's correctional facility, um certainly could have killed her daughter multiple times during this whole thing. Um was putting her daughter's life at significant risk on a, you know, on a consistent basis. Um, and she eventually got custody of her children back and she had a third child who went on to be >> diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder. And >> what a coincidence.
>> Unbelievable. I feel bad for people who actually have sick kids because now I assume there's a thing at a hospital where staff is like, "Can we okay, can we call the social worker and just verify this person is not totally insane?"
I guess that's why people get away with it cuz a nurse doesn't want to be like, "Hey, uh, I want to make sure that this isn't a bunch of bullshit." It's like, of course you believe the woman that comes in with a blue baby and you're like feeling bad for her. You know, my first thought, and I'm a I'm a skeptic, right? But my first thought is not, "What did you do to your kid?" It's like, "Oh my god, this is terrible. You must be to torn apart by this." You know, and even if it does happen a few times, I just assume something is wrong with the kid. I don't assume you're a freaking psychopath that's abusing your own kid and almost killing them so that you can get some attention. I just know and also I should say like no one should no one should assume this is this is what's happening. Um but especially anyone who works with children I mean especially in a medical setting but even you know teachers anybody other parents like people who are around children should be aware of this abuse because it's one of those things that once you see it um you kind of can't unsee it.
And I will say like the pattern is very dramatic. It is not uh this sort of subtle gray area thing that um it's quite obvious once you have all the information in front of you what is happening. Um and I think you know it is really a challenge for doctors because of course pediatric doctors are completely dependent on parents to give them I mean you know you have kids Jordan like pediatric doctors are completely dependent on parents to give them a faithful history and you know does that mean they're going to be 100% of the time and they might say oh the kid had you know like 102 fever when they really had 101 but that you know that that parents think like that that little like that sort of like uh gray area of exaggeration that exists for all things, right? Like a doctor asks you, "How many drinks do you have a week and you say two instead of five?" You know, it's like there like doctors understand that >> normally, but that's on an average. You have to stretch it out 3 months cuz I had 15 last weekend, but we don't count that, right? And so it's like doctors understand that there's like a normal level of exaggeration and this abuse is so far beyond that and it really makes doctor's jobs difficult and then it's really horrible for doctors to think you know doctors are like doctors and pediatric doctors in particular. I mean these are some of the most lovely people you'll ever meet in your life. Like these are >> these are not cops who go into everything going I'm suspicious of everything you're telling me right now.
They're going in with the opposite.
Like, I'm just here to help you. Like, I got into this profession to help kids.
Uh, versus a detective who's like, I'm looking for inconsistencies in your story because I don't trust you since you're standing in front of me.
>> Exactly. And, you know, it's it's a totally different job. And pediatric doctors are there because they love kids and they trust parents. They want to trust parents. That relationship with the parents is really important to them to be able to do their job and help that kid. So, that's what they're always looking to do. And so when a parent misuses that trust and uses them to harm their child, I mean the doctor is the weapon in these cases, you know, and so that is a horrible revelation. And some doctors will do whatever mental gymnastics possible to not recognize that they've been used in that way.
That's unfortunately something that happens a lot.
>> I kind of can sympathize with that though. like learning that you have been a pivotal part of a child's medical abuse would not be a comfortable realization to have.
>> No. Horrific and completely, you know, I think the the thing about this abuse in everyone that gets, you know, pulled into it because there usually is quite a blast zone, right? So, you've got the family members, the non-offending spouse or the, you know, collaborating spouse in some cases unfortunately. um you know the other family members, the community members, the church members that donated money and the people who brought casserles and the doctors and the you know everyone that gets pulled into this is it really does demolish your ability to trust both other people and your own instincts. Um and that's really part of the long-term psychological damage and doctors are included in that. Yeah. I mean to find out that you've been used to do unnecessary surgeries on a child, that you've made a child suffer, you know, not not by any fault of your own because of course many doctors in these cases are not at fault. They are trusting what a parent is saying and the parent is lying to them. Um but uh but of course that doesn't make it any better when you've learned that you've you've done that.
>> You mentioned the the complicit or maybe ignorant spouse. What are the husbands doing? And it's usually the husband, right? who's like not directly involved.
It I guess it seems like it would be really easy for a busy dad or a dad who's at work all the time or something like that. I mean, I leave my kids in charge of my wife. They're the mother of my children. So, I probably wouldn't be like, "Oh, the doctor said he has this.
What? That's probably not true." I'd be like, "Oh my gosh." But the guilt involved with leaving your child to be tortured by the mother and just not knowing for years. That guilt must be crazy.
>> I I think it is. And so, you know, you really have a spectrum with the partners. Um, again, much like, you know, the partners in abusive head trauma cases where that's usually a woman. And you get everything from someone who acts in a very protective manner. And the minute that they have the information that they need to put it together, the minute that compelling evidence has been placed in front of them, they will do everything they can to protect their child. you know, you have everything from that spectrum to people that uh are completely checked out and just like this isn't my, you know, which unfortunately, you know, is not is not terribly uncommon. Um, I think with uh the gender dynamics of of uh marriage and parenthood in our culture that, you know, dads are and and you see these dynamics a lot in these specific situations where, you know, maybe you have a dad who's in the military or they travel a lot for work.
Um, so maybe there's, you know, a reason that they're not as involved in the day-to-day or they're just completely checked out for their own reasons and they just kind of go, "Oh, the kids are hurting." And and and so they don't know for a long time. Um, and then you get these other situations, which we've had a couple on the show, where the dad is enabling to the point where I consider them a collaborator.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I I have to say there's there's another one that we didn't really touch on, but personally, I don't know if I would want to even admit to the investigator that I let this go under my nose cuz I was tired or I was busy working or I didn't know my wife was abusing our kids or I was on the road a lot. I feel like I might I I I this is weird that I'm saying this, but I guess it's so I'm not in the situation, but it's like I would almost pretend I was more involved with my kids' lives than I actually was, cuz I'd be embarrassed and ashamed to admit that I didn't know my wife was actually a psycho child abuser who was abusing our kids. I would almost like fudge like, "Oh, I took him to the doctor last week." Like, I think, you know, like, "Oh, that was last year. My bad." I don't know. No, I just I feel an element of shame that might cause me to actually be harmful to whatever investigation was going on. Like if I'm really honest with myself.
>> Yeah. And that's extremely common. Um you know, you get these sort of where, you know, you'll talk to doctors about, you know, and again, these are kids that are going to the doctor all the time. So it's not like, oh, my wife took them to the pediatrician for their annual last year and then I took them this year and those two visits were like months or, you know, a year apart, right? So it's like they're going to the doctor all the time. They're going to different specialists. They're in the hospital all the time. So when the police are interviewing the doctors and they say, "Hey, what's going on with dad? Like how much of your interaction?" And they're like, "Oh, he when he's here, he doesn't talk. He's usually not here. Like we don't see him barely at all. It's all Ben the mom." And then they interview the dad and it's exactly what you say.
They're like, "Oh, well I, you know, I am also involved." And I also take them to their, you know, appointments and >> I take notes on everything. Well, my wife actually writes the notes, but I'm there. I I just I'm looking at Again, this is like a gend gendered thing that um that plays into this abuse is just the idea that like >> I think there is a it's something that's very human and that I I really empathize with. But I think there's this there's also this idea of like >> um you know I let this happen under my roof. And I think there's a lot of guilt and there's also a lot of shame when you feel like someone has fooled you because if you feel like your spouse has also >> completely manipulated and fooled you, people don't love to admit that they bought into something that was that wasn't real. That's that's a very bad feeling.
>> That's right.
One thing I noticed from your show and from researching this a little bit on my own is that often these abusers, they start with like a fake miscarriage or even a fake pregnancy and then a fake miscarriage and then a real pregnancy followed by and I wondered is that just because we treat pregnant we pregnant women are up on a pedestal, right? you treat them differently and then like you treat them I mean special cuz they're tired and their back hurts and you want to give you know you treat them really well and you throw a party for them and then when they lose their child everyone's like oh my god like it's really serious you know it's really really ser and everyone rallies around you that's like the earliest these kinds of people can get the type of attention that they seem to be looking for >> is before the child is born >> that's right and you know often times not not always but oftent times uh munchous by proxy behavior which is when you are abusing someone else to get your needs met. So either you know a child or a vulnerable adult um is preceded by munchousing behavior which is when people are doing it to themselves.
Right. So a lot of cases that we look at you know the mother before they ever had actual children had as you said fake pregnancies, fake miscarriages or at least you know dubious ones. Um, and then oftentimes a long history of their own medical oddities, crises, you know, that were not uh that that were not real. And that was, you know, that was the case in in my family. That was the case in Hope you borrow, which was the first case we covered on the show where she had a whole cancer scam.
>> Your sister faked cancer. Cancer, right?
She >> Not my sister. No, that was that was I got confused. My bad.
>> Um, >> scratch that one. So my my sisters were um you know the fake pregnancy with my sister had a fake twin pregnancy that she dramatically lost um that we later learned was just not that almost certainly she was never pregnant at all and if she ever was she certainly didn't lose it uh 6 months in as she claimed.
Um but before that there were you know a history there was a history of having you know she had a a back surgery that looks pretty questionable in the rear view. She had a knee surgery where they went in, the doctors went in and they couldn't find anything wrong and she was complaining about pain, etc. Um, she had an instance where she uh was said she was losing her hair as a teenager and it turned out she was shaving her head and so she had this pretty like long history of weird medical stuff that we just didn't really have context for at the time um that preceded this and that's that's pretty common. Hopes was very dramatic. Copia had a 8-year long um bone alleged bone cancer that she had two remissions from and two huge remission parties and and that just didn't turn out to be uh real at all and that's sort of what ticked her family off to what was happening.
>> These people abuse themselves first sometimes.
>> Yeah. Oh, that's pretty common. And if it's not medical abuse, like we saw in, you know, the Lisa McDaniel case, which was the one um that we covered last season, she didn't have a history so much of medical stuff, but they do have a history of lying. So, it will be, you know, sort of these elaborate stories in which they are always the victim. So, you see, you know, uh fake robberies, um fake arson or them causing arson and saying they were the victim of it. So there there is always I've never seen a case where there wasn't a pretty significant history of deception that is you know outside of the normal again normal behavioral range of you know >> I'm guessing it's not a crime to lie to doctors and hospital staff about your kid's health. I mean I don't know what that crime could even possibly be. So >> it's not it's not a crime. Um, and I think, you know, every time I I know there there's some legislation in Texas that they've been trying to get passed.
Um, in the current climate, it is hard to imagine that making much progress.
Um, because there are people who are very against any such laws. uh specifically people who are very strongly antivaccine and want to preserve their ability to not disclose um the fact that they have not vaccinated their children for example um and you know obviously it's something that would have to be carefully you know a law that would have to be carefully written right but again I think what I want people to understand about these cases is we are not talking about subtle things we are not talking about Oh, a parent saying they vomited three or four times when they vomited twice. They're not saying, you know, a fever was a point higher than it was.
These are dramatic, you know, saying that your child tested positive for, you know, cancer when they didn't. Um, it's blatant lies. It's over a period of time. This is not an easy crime to even detect, let alone prosecute. So I think right now we have no laws against child and by proxy abuse. And so when people are criminally prosecuted, which is extremely rare, um they are prosecuted under laws that are injury to a child or um you know aggravated child abuse depending on the state and the statute where you know they essentially have to prove some physical harm. So the crime then is not the crime then is not the abuse itself. It's, you know, that they took blood out of their child and caused anemia or they um, you know, they've >> feces. Yeah. They poisoned their child.
They suffocated their child. It has to be some pretty extreme physical intervention. And even more than, you know, laws because child abuse, how we handle it in this country, there sort of these two tracks, right, where you're looking at the child welfare system, which is social workers and dependency and family court and that kind of thing.
Um, and there, you know, there's only a couple of states that even have this as a designation. So, what frequently happens when CPS is investigating these cases is they put it under medical neglect, which is not the same thing at all. And then someone who doesn't have any idea what this abuse is looks at it and goes, "Well, they're not medically neglecting this child. They're taking them to the doctor all the time.
>> They're here all the time." Yeah.
Exactly.
>> And so that's it's it's really like we just don't we don't have a lot of sort of official recognition of this abuse on any level.
It's also just got to be so hard to call [ __ ] on somebody who is pregnant and then they say they get mugged and then they say they're getting stalked and their house gets broken into supposedly and their car gets vandalized and it's like people feel bad for you. They don't It's It takes a real skeptical so like me to go like, "Okay, bro. This is getting a little ridiculous. You're landing on a little bit thick over here." Um, there was an example in your show where I think it was like the husband of the sister and was like, "How could a baby be fine one day, come home from the hospital, and the next day they're so sick that they have to go back? Could your sister be doing something?" And the wife was like, "Don't you ever say anything like that.
Don't you ever say anything." And then later on she's like, "And I was wrong."
And it totally she was totally abusing the kid. And it's like she felt really bad about it. And the husband, I'm sure, also was like feeling pretty bad that he accused his sister-in-law of abusing the kid and had his wife react like that.
But it's like somebody's got to say something. But you don't want to, right?
You don't want to be the guy who's like, "I don't know. That's all a little sus.
Who has that type of bad luck?" Like what are the odds your sister's kid has this like one in a 10 million neurological disease and doesn't show all the symptoms? That's a little That's a little weird. What do you think?
>> Yeah. Yeah. That's the situation you're talking about is with our last season's case and um you know that was the the the Sabrina who is the younger sister of the the perpetrator which is obviously that's a role I'm familiar with and I can tell you that when the perpetrator is someone that you love um impossible to overstate how terrible it feels to come to the realization that they could be harming their child and to be the person who confronts it, who says something, who reports it is so psychologically and emotionally difficult that many people are not willing to do it. Many people will concoct um you know, unfortunately, this has been the case with my brother-in-law and his family. I think they will concoct any sort of conspiratorial world to avoid looking at what's in front of them. Um, and that's just humans. I mean, that's just humans. That's just a that's just whether or not someone has the emotional courage and whether they've been given the information. I mean, I will say, you know, even with with Sabrina in that case, you know, once she was shown the video of her sister doing it. I mean, she recognized what was happening and and some people don't. I mean, some people don't. Some people can be shown something like video evidence and they will still >> explain it away and they're putting their own comfort above the safety of the children. And I think like it is it is really um it is hard because you know you're talking about a mom who's saying that she has a symp who has say saying that she has a sick child. They are exploiting probably the most sympathetic figure anyone could think of because who who is more sympathetic than a sick child and a parent of a sick child, right? If you just think about that like that's something that we're all very conditioned to respond to and that's what they're exploiting. And I had a wonderful um gal on the show um Chalice who was very close friends with the perpetrator Sophie Hartman that we covered in season five who reached out found the show while we were reporting on it reached out to to us and and she described kind of her process of coming around on it and she said you she'd been in Sophie's life through this entire investigation and got to court with her and defended her and defended her to everyone she knew and then you know she described it as when Sophie was her focus when the perpetrator was her focus, she could believe all of it, right? She go, "Oh, the doctors are out to get her. She just has everyone's got her wrong, you know, blah blah blah.
They just don't understand her kids, you know, unique health issue." And she said, "But once the children came into focus, then she couldn't believe any of it anymore." And she actually looked at what the children were being put through. And so, I think that's that's what everyone in the situation needs to do. Like think about what the child is actually experiencing here >> when CPS takes the kids away which I know is rare but like also happens.
Don't because CPS usually don't they place the kids with family which that seems dangerous to me because well because of access like these people are so manipulative they pull the wool over so many professional and family eyes and then it's like all right that's it we're taking your kids away and giving them to grandpa and grandpa and it's like grandma and grandpa and it's like okay well she can come over every day and see them so what is the functional difference here? Yeah, I mean that's, you know, that is extremely common.
That's what happened in my family. And this was, you know, during the second investigation into my sister for her second child. Um, and they were placed with family members who were not protective and did not believe that my sister was abusing her kids. They told the police, you know, the the grandfather on that side told the police, "This is a witch hunt just like last time." So, really couldn't have been more clear that they were not going to protect the kids from Megan. And indeed, um, what came out was they were letting Megan spend 11 hours a day at the house even though she was supposed to be separated from them. She was feeding them. She was changing their diaper. You know, just was letting her have full unfettered access to them. And um, yeah, I mean, that really messes with an investigation because then you don't have a clean separation test. And one of the best practices is to separate the child and see, hey, do all these issues around, you know, feeding and symptoms that the mom is saying happen, do they all disappear when or get remarkably quickly, you know, do they get uh remarkably better really quickly when the mom is separated? And if that's the case, then you have a pretty clear common denominator. And also, if that's not the case, right, I mean, I've talked to, you know, I've interviewed many professionals who have a lot of experience with this and they've talked about cases where there was a suspicion.
You know, there was one uh one uh borcerer who's a former psychiatric nurse. Um one of her first cases was a case where a child was having this symptom where they were bleeding. He was bleeding from his ears and he had a sibling that had had died previously and so there were some red flags about abuse. They separated him from the mom temporarily and the child's symptoms persist. So right away they knew that that was the mom was not the cause of it and he did turn out to be one of these rare cases where he had some rare genetic disorder that had and you know had killed his sibling. Um and so that was a case where then they were very quickly reunited and that suspicion was gone.
I see. Yeah, man. It's got to this has got to be so confusing for kids of any age, right? Especially older kids because the person you trust the most is hurting you. People are gaslighting you from all directions and the people trying to protect you from your mom are doctors and case workers and it's like they're now the enemy. It's really the upside down for these kids.
>> Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think um you know one of the things that in getting to know adult survivors you know one of the things that I think uh you know is has really become uh profoundly obvious to me is just the toll of this of the psychological damage because when the person you're supposed to trust above all people in the world I mean I'm really close with my mom. I still trust my mom, you know, more than almost anyone, right? Like you, the person who's supposed to teach you about who is safe in the world is telling you the exact opposite and is telling you only the people who agree with them, who agree with their abuser, only people who side with their abuser are safe people.
And anybody who's trying to protect them from their abuser is an evil person who's trying to, you know, kidnap them or or or what have you. And so there is this very very intense splitting of anybody who is on to that perpetrator is you know they will take them out of that doctor's office. They will remove them you know they will separate them from that family member. Um they will absolutely just immediately excommunicate anyone who is suspicious of them.
>> That's interesting. Do your parents still have contact with your sister then? Because obviously that would mean that Okay. No. Because if Yeah. If you're if you're separated from people that don't believe you, but you still talk to your mom, I'm guessing that mean cuz it seems like you kind It's hard to be like in between, right? It's hard to be like, "Oh yeah, one of our daughters totally knows and sort of proved on the show that you're doing all this and did a whole thing about it and our other daughter is like abusing our grandkids and we're like you can't really sort of ex like a gray area where you could be okay with both of those things." And you know, in in my family, which I think I I think this is pretty typ typical. Um, you know, my parents I this all happened um gosh, oh, it's been so long. Over 14 years ago, this came to a head in my family, which was after my sister was investigated for her older child. Um, you know, my parents and I once we recognized what was happening with the help of our family doctor who helped us give a name to it. Um, we were very aligned. Um, not that we wanted to take her kids away or even wanted her to be punished. I don't think any of us was in that mindset at the time, but just that the kids were in danger or the excuse me, there's only one kid, but that that that her child was in danger. Um, and so we were quite aligned on that once we had again the information. Um, and because of that, Megan cut us all out of her her life. So that that was her decision um to cut us out and it was very much this, >> you know, either you get on board with my warped version of reality where this is the hospital's fault and she wanted my parents to help fund a lawsuit against the hospital and they said, "No, thank you." Um, and so, you know, it was sort of that either it's a very much either you're with me or you're against me and >> that's it. You're not seeing your grandchild ever again.
>> It seems like there's no cure. There can't be a cure for this kind of thing, right? Because I heard on your show Munchousen by proxy. It's not a delusion. It's not like if you're if you're a mother and you have crazy delusions like you think your baby is is Satan and you're trying to poison her, they can get you medication and they can treat you and you realize you're like, "Oh my god, I'm mentally ill. I need to stay on these pills." And when you stay on the pills, you're a safe parent again. Like maybe CPS comes just to make sure like everything is but you're like, "Oh my god, I can't believe I was a totally different person because I was dealing with schizophren." But in Munchous and by proxy, this is like a compulsive behavior. It's a recovery model, right? It's like anorexia.
There's not like a cure. You can't take a pill and then go, "Oh, yeah. You know what? When I take this, I don't feel the need to abuse my kids."
>> Yeah. No, you're quite right. And it's, you know, it is very distinct from parents who are having delusions and who are having something like postpartum psychosis, which is very serious and obviously requires an intervention. But that's something where you're right exactly as you said, if a parent has the proper support, they absolutely can be a safe parent. Um, in this case, you know, and this is why I and and many other experts have have really leaned away from the idea of describing this as a psychological condition. There is, you know, a psychiatric diagnosis that is associated with it, facitious disorder imposed on another. It is in the DSM. I really have come to believe that the utility of that psychiatric diagnosis is worse than zero because I think it often creates confusion about this being a mental illness that someone can be treated for. There is a treatment model.
Um it has been effective in very rare cases and it begins with a full acknowledgement of the behavior. Right?
So, not what you usually see in cases, which is that the person only acknowledges the behavior in the context of a criminal investigation and they only acknowledge what they've been caught for. So, for instance, you know, in Lisa's case where she was caught on video doing this, right? You sort of think, how could anyone explain that behavior? Well, she did. Um, and she said, "Oh, I was so worried," and this is a pretty common framework that perpetrators give when they're backed into a corner. I was so worried that my child was actually sick, but the doctors weren't doing enough that I poisoned them so that they would have these extreme symptoms. I mean, you you can't really make it make rational sense. But unfortunately, this is something where people really want to sympathize with the perpetrator and think, "Oh, they didn't mean to do this or they were having a bad moment or they were in some kind of mental crisis." And then what happens is they um get a therapist and they go to a few s sessions of therapy and they're like, "Well, okay, well, that's fixed." And that's not an adequate intervention. And it often also leaves a lot of room for um you know, perpetrators to get their own psychological evaluation and have someone come in and say, "Oh no, they tested negative for Munchousen by proxy." That's absolute nonsense. It's not something that you can psychologically test for. It is a pattern of abuse and there either is evidence of that abuse or not. You know, the other big headline case, um, which ended up with a huge judgment in court on the civil side that just got overturned, the Kowalsski case. Um, you know, Biata Kowalsski had a psychologist.
>> Oh, was that the documentary?
>> The Take Care of Maya case. Yeah. So this is a case where there is unbelievably extensive evidence of abuse, very severe, very very high probability that this would have ended up in a fatality in in my opinion having read thousands and thousands of pages of court documentation and interviewed you know the doctor um you know and they had a psychologist that came in and evaluated said oh no Bakquolski does not quote have Munchous and byroxy and that's just that's not something that you can get a psychological test for um and you know again unless someone is willing to fully fully account for their behavior and then really yes as you said be in recovery for the rest of their life that's not a treatable person. So the vast majority of perpetrators are not going to be treatable and even if someone is in treatment um I tend to believe um that there are certain lines that if you cross them with your behavior with children you are no longer considered a safe person and you should not be around children anymore. So I think in the cases where someone has suffocated their child, poisoned their child, you know, really put their child's life at risk, I just don't think that's someone who should be alone with children anymore. Um, so I, you know, but but they they may be able to be treated and have some kind of, you know, reckoning for their behavior with their children, have some kind of well-monitored relationship with their children. Again, that's very rare cases, but this isn't something where you send someone to, you know, therapy and parenting classes and you leave the children in the house and they're going to be safe. They're absolutely not.
>> Yeah. I don't know if you can call it that this word, I'm probably misusing it. Recidivism with Munchous and by >> because it's a crime. It's a crime. So if they if they you know keep doing the crime that's recetivism.
>> Yeah. So it's the the rate of recetivism has to be astronomical then just given what you said.
>> I mean as far as I know you know I mean I don't think you could ever say 100% but I mean certainly like >> I've never seen a case where the behavior is halted.
>> Now what about how common is this? Cuz this is one of those things where it's like, "Oh my god, it's so rare. There's 10 documented cases per state and then it's like or just nobody's investigating it and reporting it and writing Munchousen by proxy. They're just writing like seems a little sus in the chart, right?" But it's not like going into a database anywhere.
>> Yeah. I mean, we don't have great data on this. There are, you know, people when they uh media outlets frequently describe this as much more rare than it actually is and they give this sort of old statistic that was from a British study that is from a long time ago um and didn't use you know great methodology. So that's you know a thing that happens a lot with science writing unfortunately. Um but you know there are some more recent studies. There's one from uh Seattle Children's um they put it at about a third the rate of abusive head trauma cases which is the most common form of child abuse of young children. Um so you know we think it's a lot more common than what is currently recognized. There are many barriers to getting good data on it. Um it's not something that people are going to self-report. Uh survivors may self-report later. Um there's one long-term study by my uh colleague Dr. Kathy Aub who's been following a number of adult survivors for a long time but she has not um compiled or released that data yet. Um so I think we may get a better picture as there is more public awareness of it. part of the problem, you know, and a lot of abuse statistics because we don't necessarily catch it doesn't necessarily end up in, you know, CPS database or criminal database. I mean, child abuse on the whole, not something that is highly prosecuted.
Most people, unfortunately, just get away with it. Um, and so, you know, a lot of that the data that we have on child abuse as a whole is collected from adult survivors. The barrier to that with Munchous and Bip by proxy abuse is many adult survivors first of all don't know who to tell once they realize they are um you know they are abuse survivors and and may not realize until they're in their 20s or 30s or beyond that they even were abuse survivors. They know there was something going on. They know there was something wrong with their childhood. But um the process of discovery can be quite ownorous for survivors.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I What do you do? you're in therapy and then suddenly you go, "Hey, uh, whoever, add me to the stats for 1996 cuz that's what was going on." And it's like, who where where do you sign up for that? What do you do with that?
It it the problem is it seems like doctors, let's say I'm a doctor and I don't know much about this. And I look at the stats and I go, "Oh, Munchin by proxy is like one in five million. Okay, it's probably not that." Cuz I'm looking at the stats that are reported and so it's rare. So I'm like, "Oh gosh, what are the odds of that?" versus actually this weird rare neurological disorder.
They're both equally rare. Well, I guess it's a 50/50 chance. Meanwhile, mud trials and by proxy is 100 10 times more common, but it's not showing up in the stats, so I look for it less. Does that make sense?
>> Yeah, it does. And I think unfortunately that um that public perception is doubled down on by a lot of media outlets. Um you know, and the coverage of the Maya Kowalsski case, it was sort of mentioned in that context a whole bunch of time. Oh, well it can't sort of the idea, well, it can't be this because it's this is so rare. Um, you know, meanwhile, the mother is claiming in that case that her child has uh whole body CRPS, which is not a condition that exists. CRPS does exist. Um, she was told by three world-class hospitals that her child did not have that, that her child had conversion disorder. and she kept looking for this diagnosis of CRPS until she found um a doctor with a uh allcash ketamine clinic who did give her that diagnosis and prescribed all of these ketamine infusions for her daughter. So it's like okay well if we're talking about probabilities here you know it doesn't matter like even if you think munchin byroxy is pretty rare like this is such an obvious case of it.
So, I do think doctors do a lot of that questioning and self-doubt and also just because emotionally it's it's so uncomfortable. And now you have this added thing of, you know, uh doctors and especially doctors that handle child abuse or really doctors that work in pediatrics, um you know, are are very aware of what happened in the Kowalsski case and some of these other lawsuits.
So, not only are they now pausing to think, well, could it be this because how how common is that? Uh, it's it's, you know, it's not an everyday thing, but I think anyone who's working in pediatrics long term is going to see cases. I think anyone who works as a school nurse in for 20 years is going to see cases. Um, and so now they're not only pausing to think, oh, are my instincts leading me wrong, they have to think, too, if I report this, is it going to end with me as the villain of a Netflix film getting constant death threats, harassment, being driven out of my career, etc. um which is not a a position we want to put doctors in. I assure you and I, you know, there's a lot of press about false allegations of child abuse. And the thing I want to make sure people really understand is that if you are concerned about parents being falsely accused of child abuse, you want as many child abuse pediatricians as possible because the data shows us that they rule out half of the cases they evaluate. And they are only called in when there's already a suspicion by other doctors of abuse. And so if we get rid of all if we drive all the child abuse pediatricians out of their job, which is something that a bunch of people are trying to do, you will end up with more families falsely accused of abuse, not less.
>> Ah, that's that's quite interesting. Um, I assume when people want to get a diagnosis for something, they move across state lines. And I I noticed a lot of these abusers, they move across state lines. They say it's like, oh, there's one special doctor we want to see cuz he's an expert. But it's kind of like it seems like the real reason is well this hospital has me on their radar cuz they kind of know something's up and that case worker who's assigned to me from this area they know something is up and police are and EMS is like hey again every so we kind of need a clean slate.
I've got a better plan now to get caught later than I did this time. Here's a mistake I made in San Jose. Let me move to SoCal and try it down there.
Something like that. It seems like that's what's happening. 100% you're correct and and most of the major cases that I've looked at have crossed state lines in some capacity. Um and you know it's it's really for all those reasons that that you've said. I mean I think again you know rather than looking at these perpetrators as oh there this lady has this weird psychological condition that's making her do these things. They are abusers. They're opportunists and they're grifters.
So, you know, for example, in our season six case, which was one that moved dramatically across state lines, um, and usually it's almost always the same reason, right? Oh, my child has this rare thing and there's this one special doctor that we have to go and see. But, you know, the reality that came to light about that move, of course, was she was convicted of abusing her middle child.
And so, that had happened in the area of Georgia where she lived. So, that hospital was on to her. um the local, you know, DeFax, which is their CPS, was on to her and they investigated originally when her son was born. They didn't end up doing anything. Um but, uh, you know, this was this was a case where people were on to her and also in the community. You know, she lived in this small town, Hazelhurst, Georgia.
Um, she had done a whole bunch of scammy fundraising when her daughter was sick, right? She'd gotten money from and support from the church community. So obviously after she was criminally convicted, uh this is a small town.
People talk, people were on to her. So the well was dry. You know, you kind of have to move on to a new community of people to uh to keep the the scam going.
And it is shocking the extent to which child abuse investigations, allegations, convictions do not follow people across state lines. There is not good communication. And also because this is happening so much in the medical system, HIPPA creates additional barriers, right? And like I see >> doctors who are seeing a patient for the first time are not going to go on some odyssey to like make sure everything the parents telling them is correct. They could not do their jobs. That's not, you know, that's not plausible. And so now the doctor in that specific case absolutely did have suspicions of abuse that she didn't report. and she is that is the rare doctor who I feel like is extremely culpable for for what happened to this child. Um, but you know, a lot of doctors are just they're just doing their jobs the way they do their jobs and and perpetrators are extremely canny about exploiting all of those weaknesses within the system.
>> I noticed that the a lot of the perpetrators sort of worm their way into social/ otherwise inappropriate relationships with hospital health staff, doctors, nurses, everything.
>> Yes. Yes. This is again a really common thing and you know it's part of the sort of um part of the sort of profile of abusers is they do this kind of you know uh lovebombing behavior with people that they want on their side. And so they do that really do a lot to ingratiate themselves with a particular doctor. And some doctors are just you know doctors are humans. Some of them are more susceptible to this behavior than others. And they're very good at finding the doctors that are um the doctors that want to be the hero. you know, the doctors, they'll they'll come in, they'll tell them, um, you know, all these other doctors have not been able to figure out what's wrong with my child, and you're the only doctor, and you're so brilliant, and they are writing all these social media posts about them, and they're sending them gifts, and they're bringing them cookies, and they're get their cell phone numbers, and they're calling them.
And, you know, I think Dr. Ness from the season 6 case, this is sort of my um favorite kind of uber an anecdote about this is that, you know, when the child ends up on hospice care, you know, Dr. Ness is in the apartment, this, you know, celebrated pediatric neurologist for some reason cleaning the mom's oven.
Um, you know, and that's just, yeah, again, like I think doctors have to be really careful with their boundaries and if a if a parent and and there's all kinds of reasons, you know, like parents in in more benign ways might try and bulldo a doctor's boundaries or just cuz they're just a regular pushy parent or or they're um, you know, or obviously like I think we've all um, you know, having been through you know, pregnancy and childirth twice, uh, you know, you sort of like baby duck imprint on the doctors that help you deliver your child. And I think it's that that is a genuine there is a genuine emotional connection I think between parents and doctors often time that is like lovely but this goes way beyond that. Obviously >> one thing that's sort of counterintuitive to me is that medical neglect which you mentioned earlier and munchous and byroxy go hand in hand. So you you see kids that have lice or something where it's like how did that what how do you need special shampoo like why do you have lice? your mom works from home or like stays with you all day. You have all these like long-term untreated conditions, yet you're at the doctor five times a month or whatever, five times a week for all I know. I don't know why. How can that I don't understand how those things go together. Like you think this kid would be aside from there being abused like would have the cleanest teeth. I don't you know I don't I don't get it.
>> Because there is no actual care for the child.
>> I see. They're not >> getting help for the kid is not the point, obviously.
>> So, yeah, they're treating that child like an object that they're using for their own purposes. So, they don't care about the child. I mean, that's sort of the, you know, bluntest way to say it.
It's they're not doing they're not behaving like a loving parent. Um, and they're not caring for their child and they're, uh, you know, depriving their child of, you know, I think the there's often medical neglect like you talked about. they're just not doing the regular sort of checkup things or their child might have some condition um that they're just not all that interested in and so they're not actually getting the child treated for that thing. Um and also, you know, they're taking them they're they're causing issues in their child developmentally by not letting them be around their peers, by telling them they can't do certain things, by starving them, by pulling them out of school. Um so the neglect is is intense and you know it is I did was talking about that sort of CPS designation of of medical neglect um being different. Um and I think we do need sort of that separate you know medical child abuse the overmedicalization piece as a designation so people understand that.
But yeah there is there is often medical neglect and and emotional and psychological neglect that comes along with this abuse.
>> How does social media interact with this sort of thing? Because I you would think this is gasoline on the fire, right? cuz you can you get a ton of sympathy online. People are already addicted to social media, right? Getting likes sort of like support and comments on a photo.
So imagine if it's your munchousing and you're like my baby's in the ER again like photo of child with tubes everywhere. And also you can look at I would imagine if I'm a con artist, which is essentially kind of what these people are like half con artist, half abuser, right? It's like kind of a blend of those things. I'm looking at like support groups on Facebook and Wikipedia and like for the bad actor there's like a training course basically online for what to look for the symptoms people's experiences at the the hospital with doctors so an abuser con artist whatever could just reverse engineer a lot of that and then feed their addiction or whatever this is whatever this is.
>> Oh absolutely and I mean my child my proxy abuse is not a new phenomenon. um it, you know, got its official name in the '7s, but it's it's probably been around since time in memorial. Um, however, in the modern era, it is so much easier to pull off. You know, it used to be that most people who are perpetrators worked in the medical field because those were the people that had the knowledge to pull it off, right? And those were the people that could go and get medical textbooks and describe symptoms. Now, anyone can do that, right? in in pretty instantaneously and and searches about you know online search history comes up a lot in the police investigations of these cases can be very relevant, right? And so um you know the Sophie Hartman case in particular, I remember she was you know googling all of these conditions. She was googling the sort of what looked like her plans for the next condition she was going to bring up and and that that kind of thing. Um, and so you can just see how that makes this this absolutely runaway thing because number one now it's just anybody can and you know I'm very interested in how this phenomenon has sort of spilled over into people that are not you know do not have Munchousin or Munchous by proxy behaviors but everyone sort of self-dagnosing online people seeing Tik Tok videos and becoming convinced that they have some condition or another. I think we're in like just an overall terrifying moment of medical misinformation, especially with like the RFK junior of it all. Um, so I think like it's an interesting context to be talking about this, but I think for, you know, for people who are doing it deliberately, um, you know, not only not only do they have all the medical information you could possibly ever want to pull this off at their fingertips, they have an endless well of attention.
Um because if they have burned out the people in their family or community or local church, they can go online, they can find these support groups. Um you know, this an extraordinary element of the Lisa McDaniel story was that she ended up working as the director of patient advocacy for a very prominent foundation, the Guthy Jackson Foundation, that was dedicated to the disease that her son allegedly had. um you know, she worked as their director of patient advocacy for 13 years and this was someone who had been convicted of Munchous and Biproxy abuse with with her younger child or her um her her older child and and so she really embedded herself in this community. Um, and that's really common. And I think it's, you know, it's horrifying to think about these communities online that are really such a vital resource for parents whose children do have this disease or for people who are suffering from a disease to then be infiltrated by people who are using all of that information to abuse their children. And it's a really scary thing. And I think anybody involved with a rare disease foundation needs to be on the lookout for it because Lisa is not an isolated phenomenon. And then beyond that, you know, you have the other thing that I've become especially interested in is that there are groups where it's just a very much a legitimate group that's a support group for a legitimate disease. And then there are other groups that really appear to be built specifically for perpetrators to give each other information to figure out how to evade child abuse allegations to figure out how to fight them in court, which specialists to go see to give you this wacky diagnosis. You know, unfortunately, the um the expert witness uh the medical expert witness field is lucrative um for doctors who have lost their moral compass or never had one. So, any parent with the means, and this is child abuse, period. This is not just medical child abuse, but also abusive head trauma, broken bones.
there's this card of doctors unfortunately that any parent with the means can have come testify you know for them in court and say oh no this wasn't abusive head trauma this was you know macroephille or one of these sort of conditions they go oh this wasn't broken bones this child has low vitamin D so they probably just have ricketetts um you know these things are not scientifically sound but it doesn't mean that they're never effective in court and they're certainly effective in the media um and so you know just because you can get a doctor um an unscrupulous doctor to say that your child has X Y or Z. And actually that's the explanation for this entire thing. You know, not uh it's not abuse, it's CRPS or it's not abuse, it's XYZ. Um and so this is a resource that that parents are sharing online very actively. Um and some of these parents are quite politically active. So it's really terrifying.
>> That is terrifying. I I think you mentioned earlier like nonprofits.
They're just magnets for these people.
They're celebrity adjacent. There's money. There's lots of attention.
There's also this huge field of people to manipulate, right? If you've got like an organization that runs, I don't know, a run for Cure the Cure, Raise for the Cure, and it's like your child's the poster one of the poster children for this thing. Like that's just a a lot of exactly what these people are looking for. And the woman in your your series, one of your latest seasons, who essentially kills her son, rebrands herself as this advocate for parents who have sick children. That's super gross, right? and she begs her still living daughter not to go on your podcast because her career would be ruined. And I'm just like, "Oh my god."
>> Yeah.
>> That was shocking.
>> Yeah. And and she did get fired for fortunately from from that job. Um you know, and yeah, that was a case where she was really exploiting her son's son after his death in a way that is really chilling. um and was heralded as this advocate and was you know according to their website had educated thousands of medical professionals about his condition and I mean imagine being the doctor who was like yeah this lady came and you know had lunch with us and explained all about this uh you know neuromiitis optica which is the which is a real condition um but is you know we do not think that her son had it after our extensive research into that case and speaking to the doc the diagnosis ing doctor. Um, and you know that was just and again it's like you know you watch these videos of her of Lisa presenting on the topic and I I met her I went to her doorstep to tell her that we were reporting on this and if she wanted to, you know, we always give people a chance to tell their side of the story. Um, you would never know. I mean, this is not someone who you just like immediately you talk to them and you clock them as, you know, you're like, "That person gives me the creeps."
Um, she just seems like a super lovely southern, you know, mom. Um, she's got her, you know, statement necklaces and she's perfectly presentable and, you know, you just would not you would not clock it. And so, uh, while I think this foundation should have done obviously some more due diligence, um, considering that she did have a criminal record, but I, uh, you know, I I also see how she snuck past the gates 100%.
>> Sure. Yeah. A lot of the the the sharing from the parents is crazy to me. Like way overly detailed, oversharing. It's like medical porn kind of.
>> No, 100%. That that's the word we use.
Yeah. Deliberate. Quite deliberately.
It's just like it's like par parents they'll take photos and they're like they're dressed in scrubs and it's like why why are you dressed in scrubs visiting your kid like you're not treating the kid you're you're visiting your kid I don't know there's gofundmes obviously right and the funds are being used by the parent not the kid and they're like oh I my son I will it's going to be terrible to lose him we need to do a makeaish thing and it's like hold on hold on hold on this is like a disease that might take his eyesight slowly over time why are you talking about him dying why are you talking about why do you need a make aish trip to Disneyland like what is what is happening that has to be really terrifying to watch if you suspect that something is going on because you're like wait a minute like if my kid is sick I am not blogging about it and I am not saying when they die or if they die I'm like I don't even want to think about that let's not do that at all this these parents are like the opposite somehow. Yeah, it is. And I think that's the behavior that if you um and you know when we talk to people who were in, you know, around these cases and involved, it's like they had a gut feeling that something was off. And a lot of people had a gut feeling that something was off, but they didn't have a name for it.
They the doctors gave this diagnosis, they presumed. So what they don't want to say, well, it doesn't seem like your kid really has something abuse. Again, it's just incredibly awkward and and sort of emotionally difficult situation to be in if you're someone that that suspects this abuse is happening. And and as you said, the behavior is so off.
And I think because Lisa was so um who's their season six perpetrator, because she was so active online, um you know, that's really a lot of what helped me keep put the pieces together in that case is that throughout the four years of her son's illness and up through his death, uh Lisa kept a very detailed blog on CaringBridge um almost daily throughout his journey. And so we were able to use that information uh versus reality both the memories of the people who were around him um and also you know sometimes videos and you know it's like she says the kid's in a wheelchair and we have a video of him on that same day running around. Um, you know, so there was a lot that we were able to connect to be able to connect the dots from from from her social media and, you know, one of the hardest, you know, a couple of the really really just gutting interviews, I I interviewed some people who, you know, her her son ended up on hospice care at her request from a non-fatal illness um and and died there. Um, you know, I interviewed a few people on background who work in pediatric hospice and again you know I have so many conversations on this show where I'm like that is a job I could never do. I'm so glad there are people that have the emotional fortitude to be able to do that job because it's really important. Um, and that was kind of one of the things they act is you know you never you also don't want to I think you know Jordan both you and I are parents that's our worst nightmare right. So, >> you don't want to I think there's a real reluctance on people watching the situations to judge, right? To say like, "That seems weird. It seems weird that you're talking about your son in the past tense when he's still alive. It seems weird that 3 days after his death, you're posting about what you should do about the funeral p plants. It seems weird that you seem so excited about all of this." Like, all of that stuff that is striking people on a very gut level as wrong and is wrong. People have a real reluctance to call that out because you just think, well, this person's child is dying. Who knows how I would behave? But when you talk to people, you go, >> grief is so weird. Grief makes you do weird stuff. You don't think like this person doesn't seem to care about their kid. That's freaking psycho, >> right? And so I think, you know, I would just urge people I think so much of this is about trusting your instincts. If something feels really, really off, don't ignore it. And I know that puts people in a really uncomfortable position, but when you're talking about life and death of a child, it's worth being uncomfortable. Um, and you know, in in Lisa's case, I mean, because she was s, you know, because she was posting so much on social media and on her blog, she was also posting a lot on Facebook.
She had these various groups that she was messaging, you know, through contemporaneously while her son was on hospice. You know, there was a lot of just like really strange behavior. And and I think I also want to flag for people because this has come up in a bunch of cases. This was in true of our season 5 case as well and true of you know the biaticals case which was featured in the take care of Maya um Netflix film when a parent is saying their child has an illness that is not fatal and I want to also point out to people that the existence of an illness you know we don't think Colin McDaniel ever had NMO I am I can I am >> he's the kid from your latest >> he's the kid from season six and that was the we don't think that that was a legitimate diagnosis Maya Kowalsski because of the way that diagnosis came about which was that her mom decided that was the diagnosis and then found a doctor to give her the diagnosis. I don't think that diagnosis was accurate.
Many many medical professionals testified that they did not see any symptoms that would match up with CRPS, but there is a there is a part of that that's a red herring because my Kowolski could have had CRPS. Colin could have had NMO. Those are not fatal diseases.
And their parents were talking about them as though they were going to die persistently in the leadup to, you know, in Collins instance, the death in my in Maya Kowalsski's situation. Luckily, her being separated from Biata. Biata Kowalsski went into the hospital and said, "If you don't give her this massive amount of ketamine, I will take her home and put her on hospice so that she can finally die. She doesn't want to live like this anymore." And Biata, furthermore, was an infusion nurse who had been giving her daughter ketamine and other drugs at home. There was no reason to believe that she wasn't going to follow through on that. And I've seen multiple perpetrators follow through on that threat. So, when a parent is talking extensively about how their child is going to die when they don't have a terminal diagnosis, that should absolutely scare everyone. And we should take that really seriously because I am of the opinion that they are telegraphing an intention or at least you cannot be sure that they're not.
>> That's interesting. Yeah. There's the other red flag that's a really big red flag in addition to the others like doctor shopping, you know, moving moving around, not accepting a diagnosis, aiming for a certain diagnosis. One interesting anecdote was with uh these women who had reported another woman to to CPS. They were saying that in a Facebook group, one of the things she was doing, if someone posted about their sick kid, the perpetrator, the mother with Munchousen, she would post something like, "My kid was even sicker.
His symptoms were even worse. He was in the hospital even longer." It's like a weird game of oneupmanship, like a contest because of the attention and sympathy given to one mother. They're like, "No, no, no. We can't have that. I need that's for me. I need that >> 100%." I mean, that's a huge piece of the pattern just sort of from beginning to end of like if there is, you know, and again, that's something that if you're talking to like a sibling or a family member that's been around that person since they were younger um that they'll just say like anytime the attention is on someone else, they have a crisis to redirect the attention to them. And so, they continue this behavior into the abuse. And so, yeah, that one-upsmanship is something that you see a lot. And it's like, you know, with Colin and again, same thing with Maya, there's a lot of this chatter about sort of their child being, you know, and in our season 5 case as well, the Sophie Harman case, their child being the most rare and the most serious um case of this like that's ever been recorded, you know? Um, and that sort of like uh which I think is just something that like most people would be like, well, right, like a normal parent doesn't want their child to have the worst version of this, but this is not a normal parent. This is a parent that wants, you know, and there's this there's this always leaning into this drama, right? This drama of having the rarest case, the most severe case, the case that is baffling all of these doctors. And that's where they can sometimes really play into a susceptible doctor's ego, right? Because they're saying like, "Oh, you have this, you know, zebra. You have this like um this the the most rare case and and they're going to write studies about it and they're going to, you know, there's going to be a like medical breakthrough because of my kid." Um, and that's really about the parent. that's really about the parents ego and them sort of wanting the attention of having this, you know, super rare case that people are going to write papers about and that kind of thing.
>> Doesn't this mess with the science though? Because if you're like infiltrating a rare disease advocacy group and you're going to all the specialists and they're like, "Huh, usually people with this have like this kind of thing in their blood and this is this rare case. This guy, he doesn't have it. We got to add him to the sample size." And like then it's just screwing up all of the science. you're polluting the sample pool. Like, doesn't that happen at some level? Because it's rare.
If you have 10 samples and one of them is [ __ ] that's a problem.
>> Yeah, it's it's a real concern.
Certainly with uh, you know, Lisa McDaniel being so involved in the NMO community and she, you know, talked about her son don, you know, donating samples to their bio repository, which we did, which we do believe happened.
Um, and you know, Sophie Hartman, again, that was her daughter allegedly had um AHC, which is alternating hemoplasia of childhood. Again, I don't believe that diagnosis is accurate because I read a sworn affidavit from a neurologist that that was not the diagnosis. Um, you know, and again, they're they're take, you know, she was taking her to this specialty clinic in Duke um at at Duke Hospital. And so yeah, there is a real concern about polluting the science with these rare diseases because if you have as it's exactly as you said, if you have a very small sample size, you know, again, most people even in these rare disease communities are not going to be abusers. But I think rare disease communities and studies and doctors who treat those rare diseases are such targets for these abusers that I think many of them do find their way into these sample sizes. It's amazing to me that doctors and judges go along with it even when in your case in the latest season another doctor calls and says this is not this is what happening it's medical child abuse and then the doctor's like okay I don't know I mean the lesson really and you say this a lot a lot a lot on the show is that people believe their eyes right they just they believe their eyes over everything else >> yeah and I mean judges are also human beings and judges are not necessarily medically knowledgeable right that's not their field of study. So if you are in a situation particularly if you have parents with resources who can go into court and say well I have this you know this happened in my case this happened in as happened in many other cases um this happened in the Kowalsski case right they had these other experts testifying about CRPS um a judge is not necessarily going to know sitting on the bench who's credible and who isn't right so they're saying well these doctors are saying one thing and now these other doctors are saying other things so I I don't know who am I to be the tiebreaker Um and so un unfortunately that means that you know prosecutors who prosecute child abuse cases really need to be uh knowledgeable about this cadra of experts. I mean that's part of the solution. The solution is obviously complex. Um but you know part of it is just that confusion about this abuse. If you don't even understand what munchous and biproxy abuse is, and you're sitting on the bench, which is unfortunately really common, um you're looking at someone who appears like a sympathetic mother and they get up there and they tell you a Saab story and they cry in court and they say, "These horrible doctors have accused me of abuse and I just have this sick child and look at everything I've done for my child. I quit my job to take care of my child. I you know and I and and they're looking at something like often is not where the child does have a diagnosis. Now that diagnosis was achieved by fraudulent means but like if you don't understand what this abuse is you're going to be like well but this child was diagnosed with this condition. So you know it's just that absolute lack of knowledge by everyone involved really just lets the vast majority of these cases fly by. I mean I've met a number of adult survivors at this point. I only know one who was actually separated from their abuser, and that was because Detective Mike Weber was involved.
>> Be on the lookout, folks. This stuff happens right under our noses. Really scary and really sad. I It's pretty heroic you're exposing this. I bet you are deeply unpopular with certain groups of people. Holy cow.
>> Oh. Um Well, thank you for saying that, Jordan. And um yes, I am. And that correct. Um, and that's been that's been something to get used to. Um, I certainly I think that especially started as I did, you know, cover this higher profile case which um, you know, ended in a big court judgment and was in, you know, the subject of a very sympathetic uh, to their cause Netflix film. Um, you know, fortunately that verdict was vacated by the Florida Court of Appeals. So, um, you know, that's been an interesting case to follow. But yeah, I mean I think like I'm I'm talking about something that makes people really uncomfortable. Um, parents rights groups are extremely active uh in this country. They are extremely wellfunded and well organized um and they don't like me um as you can imagine. Um and that's all okay. You know, I um I'm really really at peace with that. I have interviewed many child abuse pediatricians on the show, including Dr. Sally Smith, who got the worst public treatment of any of them.
and their fortitude in doing the right thing despite all of that is something that I admire so much that I figure like yeah yelling about people yelling about me online is nothing to worry about >> small price to pay right >> yeah nothing to worry about >> I was groomed to sign my first billion-year contract when I was five >> a seven-year-old is taking care of a three-month-old and then who's taking care of a seven-year-old a 12-year-old >> it was exactly like Lord of the Flies >> the adults they have taking care of you are like the people they don't want the public to see.
>> She said to me, "You remember how they bathed you?" And I said, "No, what are you talking about? We were like livestock. We had no value and we were being penned. I would pull my shirt over my mouth so that cockroaches wouldn't crawl in my mouth."
>> We got to talk about this FBI raid, the largest FBI raid in history.
>> My brother at 16 was in a concentration camp in Hollywood. 7 years. He started a relationship with Bella Cruz, Tom Cruz's kid. She told me some of the craziest stuff. Tell me what Bella told you.
>> There's a Scientology Hogwarts school in rural Oregon.
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