Most parents would do anything to protect their children. Go to any lengths to keep them safe, and sacrifice anything if their children were sick.
Which is why stories like that of Lacey Spears, and her son Garnett, are so shocking.
Lacey Spears is a mummy blogger in the US, who has been charged with depraved murder and manslaughter over her five-year-old son’s death. The mother blogged about her son’s battle with illness for many years; prompting sympathy and support from online communities and doctors alike. But when Garnett passed away after being rushed with hospital – and when doctors were not able to identify what was wrong with the little boy – the authorities started investigating.
Ms Spears has since been charged with poisoning her son with salt, through a tube in his stomach – and eventually killing him.
Mamamia previously wrote:
Lacey Spears told friends that Garnett had “failure to thrive” — a catch-all term for children who don’t eat enough and had a feeding tube inserted as a baby. In the first year of his short life Garnett, was in the hospital 23 times, once for five weeks. All these incidences chronicled in detail on social media…
Then, on January 19, five-year-old Garnett was airlifted to hospital.
Lacey’s Facebook page showed heartbreaking images of her little man on life support. She wrote that it appeared to be a stomach virus, but that he battled it bravely. Tragically, he died on January 23rd.
It seemed that suspicion had already begun before his death, with doctors were surprised by the unusually high level of sodium in the five-year-old’s system.
It has been suggested that Ms Spears may suffer from the psychiatric disorder ‘Munchausen by proxy syndrome’.
The more common Munchausen syndrome is when a person fakes an illness in order to get attention; Munchausen by proxy is relatively rare form of child abuse that sees caretakers fabricate or exaggerate illnesses in children to garner sympathy. In Lacey Spears’ case, she was receiving sympathy from her extensive social media networks; on her blog, MySpace, and Twitter.
According to the Medical Journal of Australia, “The label ‘Munchausen by proxy syndrome’ is best applied to cases of child abuse in which a caregiver, usually the child’s mother, fabricates symptoms or induces illness in a dependent child, and the doctor mistakenly believes that a naturally occurring illness is present. Thus, an active interaction between the caregiver-perpetrator and medical professional is required for the syndrome to occur.”
Top Comments
Do NOT post any comments about this women/article.
This makes her sons death in vein and she gets the attention she is seeking.
My mother has this illness, and due to this I was abused from 6 months of age, until 3 when she finally admitted it to someone (she has not since admitted it and says everyone else is lying). I had at least 18 major operations (and have some pretty full on scars to show for it), and spent a year in foster care, until I went back with my parents.
I did not actually find out about all this until I was 17. My mother has Munchausen herself and spent the majority of my childhood and teen years in and out of hospital, and battling drug addiction (partly to deal with what she did).
I have had a lot of therapy to deal with this, and know that my mother is not evil. She was very sick. She shows no signs of hurting me, and treats me very well now. I see that a lot of this may be trying to make up for what she did, but she is not a bad person. I believe the illness in her is a result of also a terrible childhood that she never dealt with.
It can be hard for people to understand this, and obviously it was a long process for me, but to forgive I needed to understand the illness. I have done a lot of research on it. Yes, the behaviour is evil, but the person is not. You can do bad things, and not be a bad person. Please remember this when you comment.