Medical kidnapping is set to take center stage in Florida as a civil case begins jury selection this week. The case, made famous on Netflix, involves parents who lose custody of their then-10-year-old daughter after checking her into a Florida children’s hospital for severe pain.
Netflix’s “Take Care of Maya” chronicles the story of Maya Kowalski and her parents, Jack and Beata Kowalski, as they navigated Maya’s rare illness, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).
The story ended with the suicide death of Mrs. Kowalski in January 2017 after the state took custody of Maya and accused the mother of Munchausen by Proxy, a rare mental disorder where caregivers seek attention through made-up illnesses of children or others in their care.
The Kowalski story represents a parental rights nightmare that is occurring more frequently as doctors continue to specialize in child abuse pediatrics.
When children suffering from unusual or rare medical conditions end up in the emergency room or hospital, the case could lead to a review by one of these specialists employed by hospitals with devastating consequences, according to experts.
“We as parents tried to do the best we can for our children,” Mr. Kowalski said in the Netflix documentary. “There’s nothing that can prepare me for what I went through, nothing.”
After Mrs. Kowalski’s death, the Kowalskis sued Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, hospital social worker Catherine Bedy, and settled with Suncoast Center and its employee Dr. Sally Smith.
The lawsuit claims the hospital “imprisoned” the daughter and violated the parent’s constitutional rights to make medical decisions for their child, an accusation denied by Johns Hopkins.
Jury selection in the case against the remaining defendants, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital and Ms. Bedy, begins September 14 in Venice, Florida.
Every Parent’s Nightmare
Dr. Eli Newberger founded the Child Protection Program at Boston Children’s Hospital in 1970 and is an expert at identifying Munchausen by Proxy. He has been involved in more than 200 cases and, after 1999, began consulting on the misdiagnosis of child abuse.The number of cases of medical child abuse appeared to increase significantly as more doctors specialized in child abuse pediatrics, Dr. Newberger told The Epoch Times.
He believes the diagnosis of medical child abuse is flawed because cases are needed to keep the programs funded.
Doctors specializing in pediatric child abuse very frequently receive all or part of their salaries from child protection agencies or prosecutors, Dr. Newberger said.
He objected to establishing the specialty during a meeting in the late 1990s convened by the American Academy of Pediatrics in Philadelphia because he didn’t feel there was sufficient science to support it.
Child protection agencies tend to accept doctor recommendations “whole hog” without having independent access to review medical reports, he said.
The very focus of the specialty makes it more likely for a diagnosis of medical child abuse or an accusation of Munchausen by Proxy, he said.
He gets weekly calls from people seeking help. Right now, his consultation schedule is backlogged until 2024.
Dr. Newberger said he only helps with cases that meet his standards and attests he isn’t a “hired gun” like some defense witnesses.
“The point is these [cases] still keep me up at night,” he said. “I mean, you read about it, you see that movie, and it’s very, very disturbing.”
Trapped in the System
Parents need to understand they may not be able to walk out of a hospital with their child if they disagree with hospital doctors, Dr. Newberger said.He pointed to research about the problem conducted by Maxine Eichner, a legal expert in medical child abuse at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
Ms. Eichner wrote a research paper in 2016 titled “Bad Medicine: Parents, the State, and the Charge of ‘Medical Child Abuse.’”
Her research paper examined the rise in medical child abuse allegations against parents who get help for their children that doctors view as unnecessary.
“The fact that this treatment has been ordered by other doctors does not protect parents from these accusations,” the paper stated.
Notoriety resulting from “Take Care of Maya” has unleashed a storm of “several hundred” complaints from parents who say they were wrongfully accused of medical child abuse, according to Nick Whitney, a Jacksonville, Florida, attorney with the Anderson Glenn law firm representing the Kowalskis.
“We’ve had to set up a separate intake system to catalog those cases. But we don’t have the manpower to handle all of the situations that we’ve heard about,” Mr. Whitney said.
Medical Kidnapping
Mr. Whitney said hospitals can use the legal system to keep a child in a hospital, which he says amounts to medical kidnapping.Dr. Smith, the state investigator at Johns Hopkins, contacted Maya Kowalski’s specialists, who confirmed the CRPS diagnosis and told her the case didn’t involve child abuse, Mr. Whitney said.
Those conversations were in Dr. Smith’s notes, but she held that information back and “never brought that to the court’s attention” when dealing with the daughter’s custody, Mr. Whitney alleged.
Dr. Smith’s office declined a request for comment.
In a statement to The Epoch Times, Johns Hopkins said privacy laws limit the hospital’s ability to respond, but their priority is “always the safety and privacy of our patients and their families.”
“Our first responsibility is always to the child brought to us for care. Our staff are required by law to notify Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) if they suspect abuse or neglect. It is DCF and a judge—not Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital—that investigates the situation and makes the ultimate decision about what course of action is in the best interest of the child,” the hospital stated.
Dr. Newberger, who is familiar with the Kowalski case, noted Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore has a CRPS expert on staff but failed to integrate its clinical services with its hospital in St. Petersburg.
In complex cases, general pediatricians would just as soon rely on an expert in pediatric child abuse to deal with problems, Dr. Newberger said.
Ms. Eichner’s research indicated child protection officials generally support doctors accusing parents of wrongdoing. Sometimes, parents even face criminal charges for perceived “overtreatment.” Judges tend to treat such charges as credible claims of child abuse, according to her research.
Medical child abuse, which has a broad definition, is “deeply and fundamentally flawed,” her paper stated.
The diagnostic net for medical child abuse captures “many loving parents making the best decisions they can for their genuinely sick children,” the paper stated.
The Kowalski Case
The Kowalski’s story began when their 9-year-old daughter, Maya, was admitted to Johns Hopkins in July 2015 for an asthma attack, where she began to exhibit severe pain and weakness, according to the lawsuit.She continued to suffer after her hospital visit. Maya was eventually referred to Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick, a leading expert in treating CRPS, who diagnosed her with the disorder in the fall of 2015.
CRPS is not well understood. The chronic neurological condition causes severe pain throughout the body due to damage or improper function of nerve fibers that carry pain messages to the brain and also triggers inflammation, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
The Kawolskis took their daughter to Mexico for specialized Ketamine infusion therapy upon the advice of CRPS specialists. Afterward, the daughter continued to receive Ketamine infusions.
In October 2016, Maya was admitted to the ER at Johns Hopkins with a severe stomachache after Dr. Ashraf Hanna, a neurologist treating the daughter for CRPS at the time, advised her father to take her to the hospital, according to the lawsuit.
State Becomes the Parent
In “Take Care of Maya,” when Mrs. Kowalski insisted that doctors give her daughter Ketamine to manage her pain, the hospital’s staff allegedly grew suspicious and later contacted child protection services.The lawsuit claims doctors at Johns Hopkins became “offended by the directions” given by the mother, a registered nurse, and father, a retired firefighter.
Hospital doctors confirmed the CRPS diagnosis with Dr. Hanna but disagreed with his recommendations, according to the lawsuit.
The Department of Children and Families investigator also called the daughter’s specialist and confirmed that Mrs. Kowalski’s request for a higher dose of Ketamine was necessary and recommended. The case was closed the same day the complaint was made, according to the lawsuit.
The parents became uncomfortable with their daughter’s care and told the hospital they wished to have her discharged so she could be treated at a location more familiar with her condition, the lawsuit stated.
Instead, the hospital contacted its security and risk management team, who allegedly decided that discharging Maya would be against medical advice. This time, the agency contacted Dr. Smith, the state investigator at Johns Hopkins, who advised them, according to the lawsuit.
The hospital called DCF’s abuse hotline again to report “inflated, unsubstantiated claims” regarding medical child abuse of the daughter, including a suspicion the mother had a “mental issue,” the lawsuit claimed.
Maya was placed in protective custody by a court that ordered the girl to remain “sheltered” at Johns Hopkins.
Mrs. Kawolski fainted when she learned her daughter was to be taken from the family and that she was accused of Munchausen by Proxy, according to the lawsuit.
Sending a Message
Mr. Whitney believes that a win for the Kowalskis will focus attention on a problem that could impact unsuspecting parents seeking medical help for children.The court has already determined that the allegations are troubling enough for the Kowalskis to pursue punitive damages, he said.
“Hopefully, the jury comes back with an award that is punitive to Johns Hopkins. That’s the best we could have so that word would spread, and hospitals would not act in this fashion anymore,” he said.
Maya is now 17 and she lives with her father and brother in Venice, Florida. She was released from the hospital after her mother took her own life.
