A case of parent claiming false illness by her baby
Officials allege that Kaylene Bowen (left) subjected her son, Christopher, to medical child abuse multiple times during an eight-year period. PHOTO | AGENCIES
What you need to know:
Things turned around last month when Ms Bowen-Wright showed up in a hospital.
Investigators believe it all began when Christopher was eleven days old in 2009.
Parents, especially mothers, are advised to take care of children’s health. But as one in Texas found out early this month, too much of that can lead to jail or to medical treatment.
The USA Today newspaper reported on Wednesday single mother Kaylene Bowen-Wright, 34, was charged with “causing injury to a child with serious bodily harm.”
There was no mention of her ever pinching eight-year-old Christopher Bowen.
Instead, she had taken the child to physicians 323 times. Among many actions, the boy had 13 surgeries; on fulltime oxygen; a wheelchair; a feeding tube inserted in small intestines; in a hospice, and multiple times in intensive care with blood poisoning arising from “treatment.”
In between, Ms Bowen-Wright had organised fundraisers, got money from official agencies for the kid’s health care and her upkeep because she had to take “care” of the fellow. One person didn’t buy that, according to the newspaper.
ESTRANGED FATHER
‘‘It’s the estranged father, Ryan Crawford.
His too many petitions to courts bore no fruits. At one time, a Dallas judge blocked him from visiting the son.
Things turned around last month when Ms Bowen-Wright showed up in a hospital. The child had a seizure, she said.
Medical staff, the newspaper cited a report from Star-Telegraph, noticed “general and full shake” but no evidence of a seizure.
They suspected the symptoms had been caused intentionally. It was time to notify Child Protective Services. “I am concerned that mother has moved from exaggerating symptoms to inducing symptoms,” wrote one Dr Suzanne Dakil in the petition.
JAIL
Investigators believe it all began when Christopher was eleven days old in 2009.
While Ms Bowen-Wright cools heels in jail, investigators and doctors are only certain Christopher was a victim of Medical Child Abuse; of her intentions not so sure.
However, doctors suspect Ms Bowen-Wright suffers from what they call Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
For now, Baron von Munchausen’s story will remain aside.
The syndrome, though, is where a caregiver, in this case the mother, exaggerates symptoms, makes an illness or even induces one in the child, according to the WEB Med.
The scary part is, as USA Today quoted Dr Michelle Thomas saying, “…this type of abuse is insidious and hard to pinpoint.”
Add to this a tendency by physicians to believe mothers and, in family disputes, magistrates and judges, and you have thousands, if not millions, of “my poor child’s is always unwell” victims of Bowen-Wright moms, who themselves need treatment, and there’s gargantuan problem exists worldwide.
