Did Belle Gibson use her friendship with a young boy with cancer to bolster her own claims?

A Melbourne family fear that Belle Gibson used her friendship with their terminally ill seven-year-old son to embellish her cancer claims.

Penne and Wolfgang Schwarz and their son Joshua were befriended by Gibson on social media in 2013 – and now they’re noticing the glaring similarities between Joshua’s debilitating illness and Gibson’s alleged diagnosis.

“It wasn’t until I started reading all of the recent media reports about Belle that I started to see the similarities,” Ms Schwarz, 45, said.

“We can’t help but think, ‘Did she use us to get in the mind of Joshua?’.

“She’d always ask heaps of questions about Joshy’s cancer and treatments. Was it to give her more credibility?”

Indeed, the similarities between the two illnesses can’t be denied. In fact, it seems that the only difference between them is that Joshua’s illness was diagnosed by a medical professional.

When diagnosed with a rare tumour in 2013, Joshua was given four months to live. He was told that no conventional treatments were an option for his advanced stage of illness.

Munchausen by Internet and Belle Gibson: the rise of faking it online.

Gibson also claims that doctors gave her a four-month prognosis. She also claims to have turned to alternative therapies after conventional medicine let her down.

Since they met online in 2013, the two mothers became close, often meeting to bond and cry while their children played together.

Belle even referred to Joshua in her book, The Whole Pantry, describing him as “the second little man after my own heart” who shares an “unintimidated friendship with our ‘brain bugs’.”

In the wake of the recent media storm regarding Gibson’s credibility, Ms. Schwarz tried to contact her friend.

Belle Gibson: “I’m really honest about my journey with my health.”

“I wanted to believe her story so much but when I messaged her to see if she was OK and ask her about the allegations she would reply but avoided giving any clear answers, or chose to completely avoid my questions,” said Ms Schwarz.

“I feel humiliated and betrayed.

“I thought she was an inspiration. I feel like I don’t even know this person anymore.”