Mother Jailed for Draining Her Son’s Blood Over Five Years, One Pint a Week

FILE—A syringe is shown during a free clinic in California, on Dec. 19, 2014. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A nurse who regularly drained blood from her young son over a five-year period has been jailed for four years.

Losing about a pint a week left the boy with low blood levels, and he needed a total of 110 blood transfusions between the ages of 11 months and 6 years.

A court in Denmark sentenced the 36-year-old mother to four years imprisonment on Feb. 7, according to local media, that have not named her for legal reasons.

She presented herself on social media as a single mother fighting for her sick little boy.

She had drained around one pint of blood a week from the boy in small syringes, via a permanent tube in his chest, reported NY Heder. 

The boy, now living with his father, has since made a full recovery. His blood levels rose rapidly after his mother was arrested in September 2017, when a police surveillance camera installed in her home caught her drawing nine two-thirds fluid ounce syringes of blood via a catheter in his vein. She repeated the process the next day.

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Police started investigating in June after they were alerted by the boy’s doctors who for years suspected that his mother might be behind his low blood levels.

The mother had told doctors that his low blood count was due to a rare bone marrow disease, reported the Metro.

Asked in court why she had started taking his blood, according to Heder, she said,  “It wasn’t a decision I just made. I don’t know when I started doing something I didn’t have to. It happened gradually. I flushed the blood down the toilet and burned the syringes in the bin.”

The court in Herning, Denmark, where a woman was sentenced to four years imprisonment on Feb. 7, 2019, for drawing blood repeatedly from her son. Screenshot/Google Maps

When asked why she did it, the single mum said, ‘I wish I could answer you, but I can’t. I wish I could.’

A court-ordered psychiatric report said the woman suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, reported AP. People with the condition make a child ill in order to attract attention to themselves as supposed caregivers.

Asked in court about why she shared about him on social media, she said, “I wanted to share his story. I think I felt it helped us. A call. You can feel a little alone. Both as a single mother, but also with a sick child.”

When it was pointed out that it was her who had made him ill, she said, “That’s what makes it all so strange. ... It is deeply strange, but I did not think it was my fault that he was sick.”

The woman, who is a trained nurse, was also banned from practicing nursing.

After consulting with doctors to make sure it did not put the boy in danger of death, the police let go of the tapping once again while they were ready in the next door. In this way, they could apprehend the mother right after a blood loss and before she got rid of the blood.

It was made Sept. 25 at 7:50, after she had filled seven syringes with her son’s blood.

The boy is 7-and-a-half years old now and lives with his father and two siblings.

His father told the court that his physical development had suffered and that he is behind his peers in running, walking, and cycling.

According to local reports, the last time a Danish person with Munchausen syndrome via proxy was sentenced was back in 1990, when a 30-year-old mother was sentenced to six years in prison for serious violence against her two sons. She was caught on video pulling a plastic bag over the child’s head. The child survived. One year earlier, the boy’s brother died of asphyxiation.