Police arrested a Texas woman after subjecting her perfectly healthy 8-year-old son to 13 surgeries and hundreds of medical visits. Authorities suspected that there was something wrong when Kaylene Bowen-Wright, 34, brought her son Bowen to a local hospital claiming that he suffered a seizure.
Medics were not able to find any traces of the medical event, which made them suspect that the woman created the symptoms intentionally. The hospital contacted Child Protective Services.
Dr. Suzanne Dakil told CPS that she worries that the mother may not only be exaggerating the symptoms but inducing them upon her son. Investigators confirmed that the child was abused starting in his early childhood.
Since he was just 11 days old he has seen a medic 323 times, the hospital wrote in the CPS petition. The mom used to force her son into a wheelchair and to use an oxygen mask. She asked doctors to install a feeding tube directly into his stomach which led to three blood infections which could have proven deadly.
The woman hospitalized the boy many times and even put him on a list for a lung transplant. Last week, she was arrested on charges of child abuse and serious bodily harm.
Boy Underwent 13 Surgeries Between 2009 and 2016
In 2015, he even resorted to a crowdfunding website where she raised more than $8,000 after lying that Bowen had a rare arteriovenous condition.
“Diagnosed at the age of two, the congenital condition is slowly taking the wind out of the sails of this bright and active boy,” she wrote on the website.
Doctors dismissed a cancer diagnosis despite his mother’s claims. Doctors found that the majority of interventions and all 13 surgeries were unnecessary.
Bowen’s dad told the press that he had tried to convince the court that his son was not ill but to no avail.
How do you do 13 surgeries and not question the fifth surgery? The sixth surgery?,
the man wondered.
His dad is looking to gain custody of the child. Kaylene Bowen-Wright was diagnosed with a mental health disorder called Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP), a syndrome that affects caregivers who:
- lie about the persons in their care to make them look sicker than they really are.
- It usually involves a mother and small child, but any vulnerable person can be a subject of the abuse
- Caregivers do bodily harm to produce symptoms
Image Source: Flickr
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