Munchausens mum jailed for child cruelty.

[champagnesupernova]

why would you DO this?

(sorry for DM link )

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They didn't pick it up because she made sure they didn't.

They were face with a child who had raised blood sugars among other fabricated symptoms induced by his mother. Doctors and nurses on the whole do not see fabrication on such a grand scale very often and it is hard to detect. Even harder to say to a parent "did you cause this"? Believe me the innocent parent would be straight on here and everywhere else to be supported and medical staff would be roundly condemned. It's not that straightforward.

This is not the fault of the medics - blaming them is plain nuts. Why have little faith in them - they treated the symptoms they saw and these mothers are very good at tampering with the medical tests and evidence to ensure the results are mostly suggestive of illness. It takes years to pick up as well - lots of suspicions going back years until finally enough evidence is there to face the abuser with it. Very very complex.

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Is the boy likely to have real health issues now because of this? Can't even begin to imagine the effects on his body

All they get is a confusing picture about what is goinjg on so end up doing more tests and investigations. It's crap for the child and crap for the medical staff.... I think she convinced this little boy that he was ill so he backed her up. Horrible horrible horrible.....

So very sad.

Sentence not long enough imo.

It is totally baffling how she got around the Medics for such a prolonged period of time.

That poor poor child, he must be utterly traumatised.

I don't think you can blame the medics for investigating.

Let's put it this way: I have not forgiven the medic who refused to investigate my dd because he entertained similar suspicions of me. Dd is now permanently disabled and has fairly severe emotional problems because she was told there was nothing wrong with her when she knew there was. Fortunately, she was investigated and diagnosed elsewhere, so no damage was done from his lack of intervention- but there could have been.

Investigations have to be done to eliminate a genuine problem.

Iirc there was a case where a child was not investigated but put into foster care because of suspected Munchausen's: child was later found to have a brain tumour. Of course noone would want that to happen on their patch. It's not just about being cowardly and covering your own back: how would you feel if there was a genuine illness and the child died through lack of treatment?

These things must be very hard for doctors.

She is clearly very dangerous and needs help. I can't help thinking that somewhere like Broadmoor would be more appriopate.

just bizarre. Find it strange that she was caught out after NHS staff voiced concerns etc rather than her dh who ''initally'' was taken in...at what point did he realise? And then what? Went along with it?

poor family.

I am also slightly in awe as to how she could get so many diagnoses without presumably hard medical evidence etc? When thinking about my poor mother who has arthritis, 2 replacement hips, one leg shorter than the other following the ops and severe stenosis of the spine and yet is repeatedly turned down for a disabled badge.....

Thank God she was caught when she was, my friends wife killed their DS before they realised what she had been doing

oh gibbon, that's awful...

Oh no Gibbon!

I know

Sadly she had issues but no one suspected, she would something so heinous She did it so slowly and litte by little. She is in prison now thankfully.

Her husband had no idea, truly, he adored his son (was one of her reasons, as well as the attention she was jealous of how my friend adored the children)

We've only spoken about it once since and I haven't seen him in years now but I often think of them.

Just so, so awful.

The problem is that FII does happen, but not that frequently. Therefore it is quite difficult to identify.

One of the problems is that the actions taken by the state are often so damaging when MSbP is alleged. That area really needs a proper review.

Agree with Riven that what does seem odd is how, once they had investigated, they could fail to spot that he did not have CP and cystic fibrosis.

I thought MSbP had been rubbished as a diagnosis?

It has callisto, although IIRC same symptomology falls under a wider dx now (can't remember if thats under DSM or ICD, or indeed both)

MSbP has been rubbished as a diagnosis, but this doesn't mean that there aren't people genuinely behaving in a way that came under the MSbP description; I don't think anyone has ever doubted that.

There has been some furious debate on these threads about MSBP (sometimes called Fictitious Ilness) and something else that i can't remember. There were some cases in the past where parents were wrongly accused of MSBP and clearly this caused great distress to the parents and children involved.

It's often brought up by posters on MN where child protection/social services is involved. It's usually those who are very anti the system that bring it up to support their view that parents are unfairly treated by social workers and the system is "rotten through anbd through" - there are quite a few posters who like to indulge in "social worker bashing." I don't think any soc worker has ever disputed that mistakes were made around these MSBP cases and the medics who gave evidence were wholly discredited as a result.

I don't think those posters will be interested in this thread because it prooves that there are cases where this sort of thing happens, regardless of what it is called. Their contention is that the whole thing is rubbish and cases like this do not exist.

It is a very sad case and unfortnately there will always be people from time to time who will act in this bizarre and irrational way. Who knows the origins/motives of this kind of behaviour - my own view is that it must be some kind of mental health issue but I am no expert in mental health.

Does anyone remember a few years ago a nurse called Beverley Allit (or something like that) who suffocated babies on the ward where she was working (or did something awful to them - can't recall the exact details) and she was said to be suffering from a psychotic mental health problem.

John Hemming won't be interested in this case as it goes against his hypothesis, which is that social workers are incompetent people who "snatch" children from innocent parents without good reason other than to get them adopted to meet targets. He hints at this in his post above "the actions of the state are so damaging when MSBY is alleged" - he is only interested in cases of what he perceives to be "miscarriages of justice" (which in his view is all cases where children are removed from abusing/neglectful parents.

At least now the child in question can live a normal life though I am sure must by pyschologically damaged by what has happened to him.

Nina
I am one of those parents you are trying to describe, I think.
I think, that I was suspected of being a mother like this one, because my son kept having to go back into hospital (NOTE: Until I took matters into my own hands, and moved him AWAY from the arrogant, incompetent doctors who couldnt fix his problem, to another hospital where he got surgery and was home within 3 weeks, with the problem fixed).

The reason that I cant say for sure that I was suspected, is because nobody ever came clean about why SS were interested in me. When my lawyer asked for all the records from the hospital, they were silent.

However, all the social workers and medical staff, nurses and doctors showed clearly, that they were in on the secret - whatever it was.

So, according to you, I should be avoiding this thread.
Well, I am not avoiding it - I am furious with this selfish bitch, not just for what she has put her son through, but for what she puts other mothers through - because MSBP is the new, fashionable diagnosis amongst junior doctors and social workers.

It's rare, people. Very rare. Its far more likely that a child is genuinely ill. Please do your job and cure my child, instead of slandering me behind my back.

My understanding is that there may be as many as 22 cases of FII by proxy each year in the UK.

It is not adequate for doctors to conclude that merely because they cannot work out what is happening that it is MSbP.

Allitt killed babies but not by smothering.

NN, one case of FII/MSbP does not negate concern over false accusations. FII/MSbP is rare. The problem is it became a fashionable diagnosis, woefully over-used, and once the label was applied, whole teams of child protection people from all the disciplines got carried away, ignoring all evidence that didn't fit the label.

Have mentioned before that I know a very eminent doctor who was quite seriously threatened by SWs for daring to point out that they were leaping for the most extreme and unlikely explanation for one patient, instead of looking at all the more common stuff first.