Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy

March 29, 2004 7:57 AM

The Kaceesque story of a woman in prison for faking her daughter's leukemia to gain thousands of dollars in donations, now says she concocted the scheme to keep her husband from leaving. Teresa Milbrandt said she regrets what she did, which included shaving her daughter Hannah's head and giving her sleeping pills to make it look like she was undergoing chemotherapy. The husband went to Prison As Well.
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a parenting disorder where parents, usually the mother, fabricate symptoms in their children, thus subjecting the child to unnecessary medical tests and/or surgical procedures, though It is a highly controversial condition, which some doubt even exists.
posted by Blake (4 comments total)

Oh, I think you meant Kayceesque! When I first read that, I thought that you were talking about Kaceesque, a town in Pennsylvania or Michigan.
posted by crazy finger at 8:07 AM on March 29, 2004

I can't help but be amused that the Faith Fellowship Church were taught a valuable lesson about taking things on faith.
posted by biffa at 8:55 AM on March 29, 2004

This woman should have declared that the whole thing was an art project. No only would she not be going to jail (with an outrageously long sentence), she might even get government funding.
posted by Faze at 8:59 AM on March 29, 2004

I find this a little confusing. To get a conviction, the police need evidence that the parent was doing the harm. It doesn't seem that a diagnosis of MSP would matter one way or the other -- it might even be considered a type of mental illness that would result in a reduced sentence or treatment instead of punishment. But if you poison your kid, you poison your kid, and the motive is secondary, an attempt to answer the question, why would you do that to your kid? But it's hard to see that it would have much legal effect.
posted by Slagman at 10:03 AM on March 29, 2004