Cruel mum lied about healthy son being 'Britain's sickest child'

[DavidT]

Incredible suff this.

A CRUEL mother made her healthy son appear so ill that he won a courageous children award and she was able to lead a celebrity life.

Lisa Hayden-Johnson forced the boy to undergo surgery, use a wheelchair and breathe from an oxygen cylinder as part of her evil ruse. She also claimed more than £130,000 of benefits.

Doctors, celebrities and charity fundraisers were taken in by the 35-year-old mother-of-two's lies for six years. The mother and son met Tony Blair in Downing Street and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey.

The boy won an award for courageous children at a ceremony in London and later, Hayden-Johnson made money giving numerous TV and magazine interviews with her son. She even obtained free tickets to ITV's X Factor show after writing to Simon Cowell about their plight.

Full story is here

its called munchausens syndrome by proxy, and isnt unheard of.

This sort of story makes me have geniunely violent thoughts.

I have watched so many children suffer horrible medical treatments and suffer from the mental affects of serious illness. The parents also suffer terribly from having to make their children endure these things.

How anyone could pretend to have a sick child is utterly beyond me.

I would do anything to have my DD back healthy and well. No amount of celeb attention or special treatment could make up for what she went through.

Agreed. It should be interesting to see what the phsychologists say about her reasons for it.

I don't believe the husband didn't know something was up. The boy had roast dinners with them and came home and rode his bike .

How the hell can you fake Cystic Fibrosis, you need a sweat test and a blood test and although i know nothing about Cerebral Palsy how can you fake that?

I think she told casual acquaintances that the boy had CF, not that she managed to fool the doctors.

Sorry for DM Link, but it has a lot more background detail. The scary thing is that it sounds like the boy hasn't gone into care, she may still have custody of him in the long run, could be in out of jail in less than 2 years .

I shouldn't keep opening these threads .

They are SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, when you have a child with a constantly changeable condition, the kind of child who could easily be in a wheelchair and need lifting in the morning, and then playing football in the afternoon.

This woman is obviously sick, and probably wants compassion as much as anything, but I am still shaking with rage. It's people like her that got us stuck in hospital and not allowed to go home. It's people like her that mean I cannot apply for DLA, because of all the comments of "how could anyone see this little boy in a wheelchair and then playing football and not suss something was wrong" (yes, I know CP is different - but how many people would make that distinction before they called Benefits Fraud?). It's people like her who have meant that dd ended up an emotional wreck. That's the kind of Mum the paediatrician thought I was, that dd's headteacher thought I was, that the EWOs thought I was.

Yes, I know it's not her fault really. And no doubt her problems are far more serious than mine. But with stories like these splashed over the front page, I can't see our lives, or the lives of anyone in our position, ever getting any easier.

cory . How horrible for you and your family.

I cannot feel sympathy for this woman. Even is she is ill. Having a mental illness does not make you immune from taking responsibilty for your actions. She was not having a psychotic episode that lasted years and years but allowed her to plot and plan and scheme.

Its extreme child abuse. What illness or condition excuses that?

I was pretty confused about the condtions she chose. CP and CF? Bizarre because they are fairly quickly diagnosable. And how did she get so much DLA without a diagnosis and the backup of a medic?

I have a feeling the hospital were on to her though. She refused to go to an appointment that apparently wouldve stopped her charade. I find the whole story very strange. Its not that hard to put your child through unessessary tests if you push and know what to say but to pretend your child has identifiable conditons - how the hell did she get away with it?

TBH I have met parents on the ward who seem quite 'buzzy' about being there. I dont mean the oncology parents but those who have children with fairly minor problems. They were very much in the minority but they did exist. Very excited about it all, talking loudly, pretty much ignoring their kids and lapping up the attention from staff and vistors. A bit too keen to discuss every treatment and symptom with eveyone and using loads of jargon and terminolgy within a few days. I wonder if she started like that? Maybe her boy was admitted for something minor and she enjoyed the excitment and attention so much she kept it going? Or maybe she is just a greedy, selfish, abusive, self centered witch?

Riven - that sounds awful.

I've just undertaken new Safeguarding training (like everyone who works in contact with children) and this is no longer called Munchausen's (can't quite remember what the new term is though). The training now covers how to spot this and, sadly, is no longer seen as the rarity it once was.

The whole idea of the new approach to training is that all people that have contact with a child such as this will have a much more clear way of reporting and linking up observations. It remains to be seen if it will work but there certainly does seem to be a more concerted effort to get the various agencies to work together. Not before time

Sorry chegirl, just read your post more closely. I agree, for some people (hopefully rare) the 'buzz' that you describe may well be the start of them enjoying the sudden attention.

You only have to look at the Shannon Matthews case to see that it wasn't just the financial incentive that kept her mother going - the media attention was clearly stimulating her.

That is so appalling, Riven, that they can't even make a hospital ward suitable for disabled people.

Brings back awful memories of my friends son who died as a result Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. He had no idea what his wife was doing, neither did the doctors.

This is indeed a frightening and scary case. However, people with Munchausen's Syndrome and other factitious disorders are experts at deception, lying and deceiving, and extremely plausible often getting a kick from fooling very intelligent people like consultants, medics, psychiatrists etc as well as their family, friends the media and the general public.

There are other threads on here where whenever Munchausen's by Proxy has been mentioned (particularly when used as a reason to remove children from care) certain Mumsnetter's immediately begin to claim that MBP (or FII as it is now called) isn't real, has been discredited and doesn't exist. Those people now seem very quiet. I wonder if they would like to tell Lisa Hayden Johnson's son and husband that FII is a condition made up by social workers to remove babies?

My heart goes out to the boy and his father. In a way they have had a lucky escape... MBP maltreatment proves fatal in a shocking 9-10% of cases.

Molly, those people are not at all quiet.

If you look at the other thread, you will see posters explain how they can accept that parents harm childen (no doubt due to mental issues) without at the same time believing in a condition or syndrome that can be diagnosed through a list of "symptoms" without any real evidence that a particular parent has ever injured or been in a position to injure a particular child.

Nobody is denying that some parents harm their children. But this does not mean that we have to accept a situation where doctors refuse to investigate a child's symptoms because the parent seems to fit a certain profile.

It is not the abuse itself we protest against. It is sloppy thinking in the medical profession. The kind of sloppiness that had David Southall reaching for the phone after he had seen a dead child's dad on television and decided his personality fitted that of MbP- without bothering to establish whether the father could actually have been present when the incident took place.

It is the kind of sloppy thinking that made dd's doctor decide that if nothing was showing on the X-ray and dd still persisted in complaining of pain, then someone must have messed with her mind: in other words she had been sexually abused. Which meant he refused to given her any further tests. Dd (we found out later) had a genetic condition affecting her connective tissue, which obviously couldn't show up on X-ray- because not showing soft tissue is precisely what X-rays are designed to do.[anger]

I have absolutely nothing against doctors finding evidence of abuse and calling social worker/police- good on them! But I strongly object to doctors who refuse to investigate because they have already made their minds up.

In fact, I object to sloppy thinking in any area of life.

SOrry typing too fast: It is not the idea that abuse happens that we protest against.

A degree of blame certainly must attach to some of the medics here for not noticing a bit quicker that there was nothing wrong with the poor kid - bad communication and buck-passing are always a feature of these long-lasting horror stories.
Cory what a ghastly time you and your DD have had - I take it she is getting proper treatment now?

Good post Cory.

I probably come across as a buzz parent though but its not that- its the way I amwhen nervous,talking over peopleand laughing too loudly. I always ensure I take dh to any appts now- partly becuase I am awareof this,and also becuase the professionals seem to have theirown version of MBPS (craphausens?) where they tell you one dx and then have forgotten it next tim eyou see them,making yuyou seem mad... (in no way implying that is anything like you have been through,and your dd)

I know profs who generally refuse totalk to anyone but Mum (becuase mum knows best apprently) maybe a dx recommendation for all SN should be at least one appt with no Mum (or leadcarer)present and another close family member if available?