Speaker 1: Please note that this show discusses child abuse, which may
Speaker 1: be difficult for some listeners. For resources about abusive head trauma,
Speaker 1: go to shakenbaby dot org.
Speaker 2: Take care of Maya Trial new details as well, and
Speaker 2: now take care of Maya Trial well. Maya Kowalski and
Speaker 2: her family have waited out five years to hear a
Speaker 2: verdict and their two hundred and twenty million dollar lawsuit
Speaker 2: against Johns Hopkins All Children's.
Speaker 3: Hospital, And did the conduct of Johns Hoist All Children's
Speaker 3: Hospital in fact?
Speaker 4: Are my class?
Speaker 1: What happened to Maya? That was the question posed by
Speaker 1: Diane Neary in her viral feature for New York Magazine
Speaker 1: that ran in the fall of twenty twenty two. There
Speaker 1: was that headline, along with a closeup of Maya Kowalski's eyes.
Speaker 1: I remember reading this article long before I'd end up
Speaker 1: reading thousands of pages of court documents, medical records, testimony,
Speaker 1: and police records about the case and thinking, I don't
Speaker 1: think this reporter understands what actually happened here. And then
Speaker 1: of course there was the Netflix film.
Speaker 5: No matter what we did, the court sided with the
Speaker 5: hospital staff.
Speaker 2: Judget don't care about the evidence.
Speaker 3: You don't get to the truth by accepting was in
Speaker 3: front of you without questioning it. And I realized that
Speaker 3: this was a lot bigger than just the kowalskis.
Speaker 1: How many times are you allowed to be wrong and
Speaker 1: destroy lives before they say, okay, that's enough.
Speaker 3: These families walked in hoping for help for their child,
Speaker 3: and some of them walked down in handcuffs.
Speaker 1: And this was followed by a high profile court battle.
Speaker 1: Nobody Should Believe Me had been on the air for
Speaker 1: about a year at this point, and this was the
Speaker 1: biggest story about Munchausen by proxy since Gypsy Rose blanched.
Speaker 1: So I felt like I needed to address it. I
Speaker 1: pulled in some experts for a roundtable discussion about the film.
Speaker 4: My impressions were was a huge opportunity lost. What they
Speaker 4: could have done is looked at the actual issues in
Speaker 4: this abuse. They could have looked at, you know, in
Speaker 4: this case.
Speaker 1: There was and that was all I originally planned to do,
Speaker 1: but everyone else just kept getting it so wrong. But
Speaker 1: it is not the person who's doing the medical record
Speaker 1: reviews job to interview every doctor.
Speaker 6: It's to look through those records. And that is how
Speaker 6: how do you get that?
Speaker 1: Why do you believe that that's the case if she
Speaker 1: is making if she is the sole person making the
Speaker 1: recommendation to.
Speaker 6: The judge, the judge is relying on. She was not
Speaker 6: the sole person. She was not the sole person. I'm
Speaker 6: sorry there was.
Speaker 1: There was Affi David's and testimony other doctors Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: in What actually happened to Maya Kwalski is that she
Speaker 1: was the victim of extremely well documented Munchausen by proxy abuse.
Speaker 1: In the year preceding her faithful hospitalization at Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: All Children's, Maya Kowalski was subjected to fifty five infusions
Speaker 1: of ketmie, a powerful drug that can cause hallucinations, memory loss,
Speaker 1: and bladder issues, among other side effects. Her treatment course
Speaker 1: also included a highly experimental five day ketamine coma in Mexico,
Speaker 1: doctor Fernando Cantu, who performed the treatment, told Maya's parents
Speaker 1: that the procedure had a fifty percent chance of death.
Speaker 1: Maya was pulled from school wheelchair bound and dangerously underweight.
Speaker 1: Her mother, Beata Kowalski, an infusion nurse by trade, administered ketamine,
Speaker 1: delauded and other drugs orally intramuscularly and into Maya's port
Speaker 1: at home, often against doctor's orders. Biata talked online and
Speaker 1: elsewhere about Maya's impending death and pushed to get her
Speaker 1: daughter labeled as terminal and attempted to seek out hospice care,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that complex regional pain syndrome isn't a
Speaker 1: terminal diagnosis, and that diagnosis was handed out to Maya
Speaker 1: by a dubious doctor after three world class hospitals diagnosed
Speaker 1: her with conversion disorder. On October seventh, twenty sixteen, when
Speaker 1: Maya was hospitalized with reports of excruciating pain, Biatta told
Speaker 1: staff at Johns Hopkins All Children's that if they refused
Speaker 1: to administer the unheard of amount of ketamine she was
Speaker 1: requesting that they quote might as well consult hospice so
Speaker 1: she can finally get enough medication and just let her die.
Speaker 1: So how did such a clear and obviously life threatening
Speaker 1: case of abuse get twisted into a story about evil
Speaker 1: doctors kidnapping a child? What was going on here? Once
Speaker 1: I started pulling at this thread, I couldn't stop the case,
Speaker 1: and the civil trial consumed my life for months. We
Speaker 1: just recapped this case in a mini series. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you don't have time to listen to the previous
Speaker 1: eighteen episodes I made about this. I ended up covering
Speaker 1: the trial as it unfolded over eight weeks, ending in
Speaker 1: a jury awarding the Kuwalski's two hundred and se sixty
Speaker 1: one million dollars, and two years later, the story continues
Speaker 1: to unfold. Late last year, a Florida appeals court vacated
Speaker 1: the verdict and the Kowalski's request to reconsider the appealed
Speaker 1: decision was denied. And as all this has been playing
Speaker 1: out in court, the impact of Kowalski v. Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: has been felt far and wide because, as reporter Daphne
Speaker 1: Chen said in the trailer you just heard, this has
Speaker 1: always been bigger than just the Kowalskis. Kowalski lit the match,
Speaker 1: and no matter what ultimately happens in their court battle,
Speaker 1: the fire won't easily be contained. People believe their eyes.
Speaker 1: That's something that is so central to this topic, because
Speaker 1: we do believe the people that we love when they're
Speaker 1: telling us something. If we didn't, you could never make
Speaker 1: it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop, Welcome to Season
Speaker 1: seven of Nobody Should Believe Me. The Kowalski's legal battle
Speaker 1: had already been going on for years by the time
Speaker 1: this story got traction in the media. Jack Kowalski filed
Speaker 1: his original lawsuit in October of twenty eighteen, two years
Speaker 1: almost to the day after Maya was originally hospitalized with
Speaker 1: the defendant, Johns Hopkins All Children's So.
Speaker 4: The original lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, brought
Speaker 4: by the Kowalski family alleged a lot of things, some
Speaker 4: of which were dismissed before trial. The original lawsuit brought
Speaker 4: claims for everything from malicious prosecution for the hospital and
Speaker 4: their healthcare providers, calling the Department of Children and Family
Speaker 4: Services reporting suspicions of medical child abuse and neglect.
Speaker 1: We spoke to Ethan Shapiro, an attorney for Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: All Children's about how this court case and its aftermath
Speaker 1: have played out.
Speaker 4: The counts that survived included everything from medical malpractice for
Speaker 4: the alleged misdiagnosis of medical child abuse, the alleged failure
Speaker 4: to give what we considered to be extreme doses of
Speaker 4: ketamine and other dangerous drugs. There were allegations of battery,
Speaker 4: and there were allegations of intentional infliction of emotional distress,
Speaker 4: some of which the family alleged caused the mother to
Speaker 4: commit suicide. As you saw from the appellate court ruling,
Speaker 4: the Appella Court sided with my client, JOHNS. Hopkins All
Speaker 4: Children's Hospital, ultimately finding that the hospital complied in good
Speaker 4: faith with the mandatory protection statutes and were not liable
Speaker 4: as a matter of law or as a matter of
Speaker 4: fact for the unfortunate death of missus Kowalsky.
Speaker 1: There were two possible far reaching issues with the Kowalski
Speaker 1: verdict had it wisted appeal. One is the potential legal
Speaker 1: precedent set by allowing a family to claim damages against
Speaker 1: an institution for a suicide, and the other, of course,
Speaker 1: was holding the hospital libel for reporting abuse.
Speaker 4: The attempts to hold healthcare providers liable for mandatory reporting
Speaker 4: under Chapter thirty nine are rare, but not unheard of.
Speaker 4: In fact, if you looked at the published decisions, a
Speaker 4: lot of them are for the flip side, where you know,
Speaker 4: for example, a parent whose child was ultimately abused or
Speaker 4: harmed is suing a state agency or a mandatory reporter
Speaker 4: for failing to report suspected abuse. I think for example,
Speaker 4: you know, in a case of a contested divorce where
Speaker 4: a child reports symptoms of sexual abuse to a teacher
Speaker 4: and the teacher doesn't bring that forward, you could see
Speaker 4: a situation where the other custodial parent finds out about
Speaker 4: that and then would have a lawsuit or potential prosecution
Speaker 4: against a mandatory reporter. Now, all of that being said,
Speaker 4: we've seen a spate of these lawsuits more in frequency
Speaker 4: since the Kowalski case, since the movie, and since the
Speaker 4: fact that it survived the initial motions to dismiss based
Speaker 4: on statutory immunity. How often do we see these types
Speaker 4: of cases go to trial? Incredibly rare, and I think
Speaker 4: they're going to become more rare now that the Second
Speaker 4: District Court of Appeal has reaffirmed statutory rights and immunities
Speaker 4: for mandatory reporters.
Speaker 1: The Kowalski lawsuit and its imitators position this legal battle
Speaker 1: very clearly as a parent's rights issue, claiming that quote
Speaker 1: doctor Smith and Johns Hopkins all Children's knowingly and recklessly
Speaker 1: violated Jack and Beata's constitutional right to make medical decisions
Speaker 1: for their child by refusing to discharge Maya following repeated
Speaker 1: requests from Jack and Beata and by conspiring to abuse
Speaker 1: a process and legislative provisions designed to purtat children from
Speaker 1: imminent harm. And while some of the counts of the lawsuits,
Speaker 1: such as conspiracy, malicious prosecution, and the First and Fourteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment claims were dismissed before trial, the spirit of these
Speaker 1: claims remained. The plaintiff's story was that the doctors had
Speaker 1: conspired to separate Maya from her mother. They'd known their
Speaker 1: abuse claims were fake, and they made them anyway, and
Speaker 1: their wanton disregard for this family had driven Biata Kowalski
Speaker 1: to take her own life. And these claims have served
Speaker 1: as inspiration for a number of other lawsuits around the
Speaker 1: country against child abuse pediatricians, and hospitals, from San Diego
Speaker 1: to Minnesota to Pennsylvania. According to these lawsuits, doctors aren't
Speaker 1: just making mistakes. They're all powerful entities who are conspiring
Speaker 1: to remove children from their innocent parents for their own
Speaker 1: financial gain and career advancement. The terminology varies depending on
Speaker 1: the venue, but there is in fact a name for
Speaker 1: all of this medical kidnapping. Like any other conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: it's hard to trace the exact origins of the term
Speaker 1: medical kidnapping, but it appears to have gained a foothold
Speaker 1: in parents' rights focused internet spaces sometime in the twenty tens,
Speaker 1: and gained significant traction during the highly publicized Justina Pelletier case,
Speaker 1: a precursor lawsuit involving Munchhausen by proxy. Medical kidnapping is
Speaker 1: deeply entwined with the idea that Munchausen by proxy isn't
Speaker 1: a real form of abuse, that every allegation is necessarily false,
Speaker 1: a witch hunt against carrying moms, and that CPS workers
Speaker 1: and physicians are hiding behind their legal immunity protections. This
Speaker 1: concept has even deeper Internet origins than medical kidnapping itself,
Speaker 1: going back to the Mothers Against Munchhausen Allegations website, which
Speaker 1: popped up in the late nineties. Medical kidnapping, like so
Speaker 1: many things, is a fringe idea that has migrated from
Speaker 1: the dark corners of the Internet into mainstream publications such
Speaker 1: as The New York Times and Pro publica People magazine
Speaker 1: where Take Care of Maya producer Caitlin Keating worked when
Speaker 1: she did discovered this story. Published an article in November
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five, titled where is Maya Kowalski Now?
Speaker 1: All about her life after getting medically kidnapped ten years ago.
Speaker 1: This was weeks after the verdict was reversed. So how
Speaker 1: did we get here and how did hospitals become such
Speaker 1: a target?
Speaker 4: So hospitals are in a very unique situation for children
Speaker 4: that are at risk for suspicions of neglect or abuse
Speaker 4: because often healthcare workers are the frontline defense and being
Speaker 4: able to diagnose it and being able to report it.
Speaker 4: If you think of a situation where a child would
Speaker 4: come into a hospital with an unexplained fracture that couldn't
Speaker 4: be a result of anything other than trauma, and potentially
Speaker 4: trauma in an area that couldn't be explained in the
Speaker 4: absence of intentional abuse, the healthcare worker would be the
Speaker 4: one that would be in the best position to make
Speaker 4: that call of reasonable suspicion to the Department of Children
Speaker 4: and Families. Now, in that unique situation where the child's
Speaker 4: an impatient in the hospital, already the easiest thing for
Speaker 4: the courts to do to try to find an immediate
Speaker 4: safe placement for the child before the court can figure
Speaker 4: out whether one of the custodial parents or perhaps a
Speaker 4: grandparent or a relative could be filled in that role
Speaker 4: is to shelter the child immediately at the hospital. So
Speaker 4: hospitals are put in sort of a precurious position that
Speaker 4: other mandatory reporters don't have to deal with. Think firefighters,
Speaker 4: teachers in some states. Journalists are never going to be
Speaker 4: in the situation that the person making the report may
Speaker 4: also be the person required by order of the court
Speaker 4: to provide safe shelter to the child in the short
Speaker 4: and the medium term.
Speaker 1: And does a hospital, once a child is sheltered there,
Speaker 1: does a hospital have any choice about whether or not
Speaker 1: to keep that child there Under the law, No.
Speaker 4: The hospital is required to follow the court order, just
Speaker 4: as anyone would be required to follow the court order. Now,
Speaker 4: the hospital can make recommendations as to what they believe
Speaker 4: is in the best interests of the child from a
Speaker 4: medical standpoint, for whatever medical treatment is necessary. And if
Speaker 4: you remember back to the Kwalski case, once all children
Speaker 4: reasonably believe that Maya would have benefited from intensive impatient
Speaker 4: or outpatient psychotherapy to treat whatever her pain syndrome was,
Speaker 4: they made a recommendation to transfer to Nemours Hospital in Orlando,
Speaker 4: who are experts in that so they can make recommendations,
Speaker 4: but absent an order from the court releasing the jurisdiction,
Speaker 4: the hospital has to keep the child in custody.
Speaker 1: There are many worthwhile critiques about how child protection is
Speaker 1: handled in the US, and we're going to dig into
Speaker 1: those this season. But sorry if this is a spoiler.
Speaker 1: There is no evidence that doctors are conspiring to kidnap
Speaker 1: children or even making a significant number of incorrect abuse diagnoses.
Speaker 1: So why has this idea gotten so much traction? What
Speaker 1: is this actually about?
Speaker 4: I think what the plaintiff ultimately wanted to try was
Speaker 4: a civil rights case. And Andrew, when you spoke earlier
Speaker 4: about this, you know, influx of what's been called generously
Speaker 4: a parents' rights movement, which is always in tens with
Speaker 4: what may be best for the child. This case was,
Speaker 4: in the plaintiff's mind, one of those cases in the forefront.
Speaker 4: They brought constitutional actions that were dismissed. I mean, you
Speaker 4: heard the backstory from the Kwalskis escaping a communist system
Speaker 4: with the implication to only find themselves, you know, at
Speaker 4: the center of a deep state conspiracy, amongst multiple acts
Speaker 4: to harm Maya and target the mother for reasons that
Speaker 4: were never fully explained, at least not with evidence, and
Speaker 4: as a second district said, there was no evidence of
Speaker 4: any intent directed at YadA Kuwalski whatsoever. But that was
Speaker 4: certainly what they wanted to put in front of the jury,
Speaker 4: and that was certainly one of the things that they
Speaker 4: thought that they could exploit for the purpose. From my
Speaker 4: perspective of drumming up dureror emotions, the.
Speaker 1: Plaintiff's lawyers and the Netflix film told an emotionally evocative
Speaker 1: story about a suffering family, but by leaving out so
Speaker 1: much crucial information, that story obscured a very big question.
Speaker 1: What would have happened if there hadn't been a report?
Speaker 1: What if Beata had been allowed to carry on? Should
Speaker 1: parents just be allowed to give their children fifty to
Speaker 1: one hundred times the recommended dose of ketamine and subject
Speaker 1: them to experimental procedures that carry a fifty percent risk
Speaker 1: of death? According to Jack Kwall's these post vertic comments
Speaker 1: in the press, Yes.
Speaker 4: Parents have rights and.
Speaker 1: They make the decision for their children. Ethan disagrees.
Speaker 4: So hospitals are not burgering. You can't walk into a
Speaker 4: hospital and have it your way and demand medical careent
Speaker 4: that is wildly outside accepted medical standards. You can't do
Speaker 4: it for yourself, and it's going to draw extra scrutiny
Speaker 4: if you're going to demand it on behalf of a
Speaker 4: vulnerable child or a vulnerable adult that truly cannot consent
Speaker 4: on their own behalf. And that's fine. Our system is
Speaker 4: set up where we have parents be the natural guardians
Speaker 4: of the children, who are empowered to make reasonable medical decisions,
Speaker 4: just the same way that you can be appointed to
Speaker 4: be the medical guardian for somebody becomes gold and infirm.
Speaker 4: But it doesn't give the guardian the unfettered right to
Speaker 4: demand treatment that medical providers know to be dangerous. You know,
Speaker 4: there are protocols and pathways for the safe treatment of
Speaker 4: chronic regional paident syndrome, for the safe treatment of conversion
Speaker 4: syndrome of factitious disorder, and none of them call for
Speaker 4: doses of ketamine that I think the evidence showed were
Speaker 4: twenty three milligrams per kilogram per hour, which is more
Speaker 4: than what you need to anesetize a two thousand pounds horse.
Speaker 4: So the parents have rights to direct reasonable medical care,
Speaker 4: but they don't have an unfettered right to direct and
Speaker 4: demand dangerous medical care.
Speaker 1: The question of what rights children should have as human
Speaker 1: beings isn't a new one, and the tension between children's
Speaker 1: rights to be safe and cared for and their parents'
Speaker 1: rights to make decisions on their behalf is something that
Speaker 1: hospitals have always been caught in the middle of.
Speaker 4: Hospitals have been dealing with this for years. There are
Speaker 4: religious sects that do not believe in blood transfusions, so
Speaker 4: hospitals have attorney on standby that they call it to
Speaker 4: in the morning to say, we have a child here
Speaker 4: who's been in a horrific accident. The child's bleeding out.
Speaker 4: The only way to survive is to transfuse blood, and
Speaker 4: the parents are saying that they're object on religious and
Speaker 4: moral grounds. We file motions with the court, We wake
Speaker 4: up the judge in the middle of the night, We
Speaker 4: get an order from the judge for immedia blood transfusions,
Speaker 4: and we transfuse the child to save the child's life
Speaker 4: above what the parents' wishes are. That's the tension in
Speaker 4: society where you know your religious rights and your rights
Speaker 4: to direct medical care. We've decided as a society end
Speaker 4: when it's going to jeopardize the life of a child.
Speaker 4: So it's not a new concept. It's not a new
Speaker 4: concept in the law, and it's not isolated to cases
Speaker 4: like this.
Speaker 1: Halfway through the trial, just as the defense was going up,
Speaker 1: Judge Hunter Carroll ruled to dramatically limit testimony pertaining to
Speaker 1: Munchausen biproxy abuse. This was baffling given that the abuse
Speaker 1: was the reason Maya had been separated from her parents
Speaker 1: in the first place, not to mention the fact that
Speaker 1: the plaintiff had already been allowed to assert in their
Speaker 1: opening statement and had one witness testify that Biata Kowalski
Speaker 1: did not have Munchausen biproxy, which they framed as a
Speaker 1: psychological condition rather than a form of abuse.
Speaker 4: So I'm certainly not here to criticize tough decisions made
Speaker 4: by the trial court on evidence. But to your question
Speaker 4: about whether this particular issue brought in the mother's psychological diagnosis,
Speaker 4: there could be ways you could start the trial and
Speaker 4: go through the entire trial where that becomes less of
Speaker 4: an issue. However, if the plaintiffs are permitted to stand
Speaker 4: up an opening argument and talk about how the collective
Speaker 4: they set about to destroy this family with an erroneous
Speaker 4: diagnosis of munch by proxy, or to talk about how
Speaker 4: even though Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital made the reasonable
Speaker 4: medical choice to try to escalate Maya's condition, whatever it
Speaker 4: may be, to the specialist set nomors, that the family
Speaker 4: objected to that because of this erroneous diagnosis of medical
Speaker 4: child abuse from munchausen Brod proxy. That, from my perspective,
Speaker 4: necessitates the defense to be able to justify to the
Speaker 4: jury that's now heard this testimony for several weeks to
Speaker 4: justify that that diagnosis or that working diagnosis, whether it
Speaker 4: appears in the medical record or on medical billing, was
Speaker 4: made reasonably. And I think the question that you're getting
Speaker 4: to next is if that's true, then why didn't we
Speaker 4: watching this trial get to see all of Sally Smith's
Speaker 4: detailed report that the hospital relied on in part in
Speaker 4: arriving at some more diagnoses.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, importantly with the framing of
Speaker 1: this right, the question is whether there was number one
Speaker 1: cause for concern to make that immediate call, and then
Speaker 1: was there evidence of abuse that necessitated this separation period
Speaker 1: and her being sheltered in the hospital, And in fact,
Speaker 1: there was extensive evidence, And so that's the question. However,
Speaker 1: the plaintiff did have several witnesses testify that Beata, including
Speaker 1: doctor Chopra, who is not an expert on this, that
Speaker 1: Beata Qualsky did not have Munchausen by proxy, and so
Speaker 1: they were permitted to testify, as you said, like in
Speaker 1: the negative, that this was an outrageous allegation and that
Speaker 1: you know, Biata was a caring mother who was making
Speaker 1: appropriate medical decisions. So there was evidence allowed to be
Speaker 1: presented about Munchausen by proxy by the plaintiff. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about the decision that the trial court made halfway
Speaker 1: through the trial, Uh, when it was the defense's turn
Speaker 1: to present.
Speaker 4: So from my perspective sitting at council table, it appeared
Speaker 4: the court wanted to refocus the trial on the remaining
Speaker 4: allegations medical malpractice, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and I
Speaker 4: think there were some battery allegations in there as well.
Speaker 4: And the court's central question was what does the mother's
Speaker 4: state of mind or whether she suffers from this psychological
Speaker 4: diagnosis have to do with whether the hospital provided medically
Speaker 4: acceptable care to Mia Kwalski. In the abstract, that's a
Speaker 4: completely fair question, right because if you take it one
Speaker 4: step back further, my client's position from day one was
Speaker 4: whether this is CRPS or whether it's factitious disorder or
Speaker 4: conversion disorder or a psychological pain response. The treatment for
Speaker 4: this is still not wild doses of ketmie third enough
Speaker 4: to nessetize the horse. Now back to your question, you know,
Speaker 4: in real time from my perspective, and it's just mine
Speaker 4: at defense council table, we felt it necessary to paint
Speaker 4: the full picture for the jury, so we didn't look
Speaker 4: like monsters that were coming up with this diagnosis to
Speaker 4: target the family. But in the abstract, that was the
Speaker 4: way the court was looking at the question in real time,
Speaker 4: and you know, certainly that affected the presentation of evidence
Speaker 4: after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because while there was quite a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: that was admitted at trial and during the pre trial period.
Speaker 1: I mean, this has been one of the benefits as
Speaker 1: a journalist about reporting on this case is that we
Speaker 1: just have so much information to work with, there are
Speaker 1: only pieces of that that were actually presented at trial.
Speaker 1: I don't think beyondest blog was ever presented at trial,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty strong piece of evidence. And so
Speaker 1: this this trial court decision made it so that certain
Speaker 1: things that even were available to the public were not
Speaker 1: available to the jury. And then it also meant that
Speaker 1: the one piece of documentation that really tied all of
Speaker 1: this together from the person who had the highest level
Speaker 1: of expertise about child abuse and who had reviewed thousands
Speaker 1: of pages of medical records, and that would be doctor
Speaker 1: Sally Smith's report, and that was never admitted into evidence.
Speaker 6: That remains private and sealed.
Speaker 4: To this day. It does, yes, her report is confidential.
Speaker 4: I mean the lawyers have seen it because we had
Speaker 4: the potential introducing in evidence, so I know what it says. Obviously,
Speaker 4: doctor Smith knows what it says. The family knows what
Speaker 4: it says. The family did not want the jury to
Speaker 4: see it for understandable reasons. But ultimately the court made
Speaker 4: the decision that the court made based on what I
Speaker 4: told you. That was what I understood to be the
Speaker 4: court's logic. You know, the courts certainly had their reasons
Speaker 4: for following it. They were understandable to me in a vacuum,
Speaker 4: you know, it was. But again, it was frustrating to
Speaker 4: some degree that that report felt necessary from the defenses perspective,
Speaker 4: to rebut insinuations of these false allegations or that they
Speaker 4: came out of nowhere, they were introduced by the planet.
Speaker 1: You know, as someone who tells stories for a living
Speaker 1: about abuse, and specifically about this abuse, you have to
Speaker 1: really tie it together. It's not well understood. It's not
Speaker 1: easy for your average sure to understand exactly what the
Speaker 1: harm was to this child and what the danger that
Speaker 1: she was in. But you know, just in terms of
Speaker 1: like the asymmetry in the storytelling that you have the
Speaker 1: plaintiff able to tell this very dramatic story, which they did.
Speaker 6: With all all kinds of tactics.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: They had a lot of pictures, they played the nine
Speaker 1: to one one call, They had videos of the family,
Speaker 1: they had videos of Maya in pain. You know, they
Speaker 1: used a lot of elements to tell this story.
Speaker 6: It's sort of did that decision kind of hamstring.
Speaker 1: The defense's ability to tell a story that actually put
Speaker 1: the focus back on.
Speaker 4: My Yeah, perhaps so again from the hospital's perspective, and
Speaker 4: maybe let me take it a step back from that,
Speaker 4: and this is me talking right from my perspective, But
Speaker 4: it's based on a lot of conversations with healthcare providers,
Speaker 4: a parent coming in with a different belief of what
Speaker 4: their child has is not uncommon, and most healthcare providers
Speaker 4: are not offended by that. Like healthcare providers are human,
Speaker 4: Medicine is an art and a science. You have a
Speaker 4: constellation of symptoms and sometimes reasonable people can disagree. That's
Speaker 4: why they call it a standard of care, not necessarily one.
Speaker 4: You know, correct diagnosis and every circumstance And where am
Speaker 4: I going with this? Dandred? So think about it this way.
Speaker 4: If somebody comes into to a hospital or a doctor
Speaker 4: and says, I think my child's got irritable bowel syndrome,
Speaker 4: and what really helps them is if I give them,
Speaker 4: you know, and ensure and to tile in all when
Speaker 4: they complain. The doctor could tell you, based on my
Speaker 4: test and based on my clinical diagnosis and the symptoms,
Speaker 4: I don't think your child has that. But if that's
Speaker 4: the only treatment you're recommending for what you think the
Speaker 4: diagnosis is, we're not calling DCF on you because you're
Speaker 4: not putting the child in danger. So merely because the
Speaker 4: hospital is a difference that you know, we don't think
Speaker 4: and when I say we, I'm speaking on behalf of
Speaker 4: basically every certified medical profession, with the exception of Kirkpatrick
Speaker 4: and Hannah. We don't think Maya has CRPS, says Lourie's
Speaker 4: Hospital in Chicago, says Tampa General Hospital, says All Children's Hospital,
Speaker 4: and says everyone else in between. They're not calling DCF.
Speaker 4: The call was based on the fact that you're hearing
Speaker 4: evidence of immediate threat to Maya's life, either from the
Speaker 4: drugs that are being given or what the mother is
Speaker 4: saying that she's going to do if you don't put
Speaker 4: my child in a propo follower academy induced coma. So,
Speaker 4: you know, going back to your initial question of you know,
Speaker 4: how does this affect the presentation of evidence, I think
Speaker 4: it affects it to the degree that this is not
Speaker 4: just about a parent disagreeing with what the diagnosis is
Speaker 4: and you know, portraying this as ou ivy league people
Speaker 4: up in your tower think you know what's best for
Speaker 4: my child. The imminent danger that a child could be
Speaker 4: in if the parents fervently believe and are disregarding medical
Speaker 4: advice from several world class and local providers is where
Speaker 4: the context needs to come for the jury to understand
Speaker 4: ultimately why the hospital was making reasonable decisions both in
Speaker 4: their medical care and their recommendations for future care.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So take us to the verdict. What ultimately was the
Speaker 1: verdict in the award in this.
Speaker 4: Case, gross verdict I believe was for two hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty one million that was set aside slightly by the
Speaker 4: trial court on some post trial motions. That verdict has
Speaker 4: been completely vacated or erased by the Second District Court
Speaker 4: of Appeal finding there were multiple errors in the way
Speaker 4: that the Chapter thirty nine, the statutory immunity was ultimately applied.
Speaker 4: So right now there is no verdict against my client
Speaker 4: and no judgment that we're liable for.
Speaker 1: I've thought a lot about why the Kowalski story took
Speaker 1: off the way it did, and how such a well
Speaker 1: documented abuse case got laundered to the extent of a
Speaker 1: sympathetic Netflix documentary and a quarter billion dollar verdict in court.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't hurt that Maya is a beautiful white
Speaker 1: girl with a dead mother, a sort of true crime
Speaker 1: Disney princess. But I think Beata's absence from this story
Speaker 1: is what really allowed it to take off. Beata Kowalski
Speaker 1: was a complicated person in real life, someone capable of
Speaker 1: subjecting her daughter to unfathomable abuse. She said she would
Speaker 1: put her daughter on hospice and let her die. I
Speaker 1: have no reason to believe that she wasn't serious about
Speaker 1: that threat. But in the retelling, Beata is flattened into
Speaker 1: an archetypal, self sacrificing, heroic mother, the one people want
Speaker 1: to believe in. And because she wasn't around to complicate
Speaker 1: this picture, the filmmakers and lawyers got to make her
Speaker 1: into whatever they wanted. And of course Maya and her
Speaker 1: younger brother are incredibly sympathetic figures. They've lived through a
Speaker 1: multitude of traumas in their young lives. But the idea
Speaker 1: that the doctors were the cause of these traumas, rather
Speaker 1: than the intervention that likely saved Maya Kuwalski's life, is
Speaker 1: counter to reality. But I have a strong sense that
Speaker 1: most people watching the film and cheering on the initial
Speaker 1: jury decision don't have any idea what this verdict actually meant.
Speaker 4: From my perspective, had this verdict remained, this would have
Speaker 4: continued to be a massive chilling effect on the ability
Speaker 4: of mandatory reporters to report their suspicions of medical child abuse,
Speaker 4: physical child abuse, mental child abuse, or neglect without the
Speaker 4: fear of being prosecuted. In a civil court, being prosecuted
Speaker 4: in the court of public opinion, and potentially having your
Speaker 4: life and your finances and your professional license ruined. And
Speaker 4: unless you're on the front lines of this, I represent
Speaker 4: hospitals for a living, so I have a lot of
Speaker 4: people call me with questions what do you think in
Speaker 4: this scenario? And I remember one that really haunted me.
Speaker 4: It was about two weeks after the verdict, and I
Speaker 4: had a client, a doctor call me who is an
Speaker 4: er physician, and said, I have a child in here.
Speaker 4: She's an eleven year old girl. She's got a severe
Speaker 4: vaginal infection, and the person who's posing as the parent
Speaker 4: doesn't seem to speak the same language as her right
Speaker 4: flashing lights for child trafficking and sexual abuse. And her
Speaker 4: question was, if I call this, do I have to
Speaker 4: attach my name to it, which in Florida you do
Speaker 4: if you're a healthcare provider. Can that be discoverable? And
Speaker 4: can I be sued? And the answer to all of
Speaker 4: those questions are yes, yes, and yes. And you know
Speaker 4: what I have to explain in this is while you
Speaker 4: can be sued, one would hope that given the fact
Speaker 4: that you have what I think is more than a
Speaker 4: reasonable suspicion that should you be sued, we'd be able
Speaker 4: to get the case dismissed right away, which always leads
Speaker 4: to the next question, Then what happened in Kowalski? Right,
Speaker 4: And I'm not trying to make it so simple to
Speaker 4: say that, you know, there's no scenario that any mandated
Speaker 4: reporter could step above or beyond the bounds of immunity,
Speaker 4: even though I believe in the second district seemed to
Speaker 4: agree that the evidence was that all Children's complied in
Speaker 4: good faith with their mandatory reporting obligations. But imagine if
Speaker 4: you're in that situation, on the front line of protecting
Speaker 4: children and you were pausing. And that's what I'm talking
Speaker 4: about in terms of the chilling effect. If it happens
Speaker 4: in a case that's that obvious, then what happens on
Speaker 4: the cases that are more in the margins and when
Speaker 4: the statute is written, where these people can be prosecuted
Speaker 4: for failure to report a suspicion, not a substantiated belief,
Speaker 4: but a suspicion, then I think, from my perspective, for
Speaker 4: those two years, the chilling effect was very real.
Speaker 1: Much of the media surrounding these cases emphasize the idea
Speaker 1: that doctors and child abuse pediatricians are rushing to judgment.
Speaker 1: Diane Neary, the journalist I mentioned up top, recently did
Speaker 1: a season of Cereal called The Preventionist, where she hammered
Speaker 1: her argument against child abuse pediatricians with these words in
Speaker 1: the series finale quote, I'm saying, even one pause, one wait,
Speaker 1: a second might be the difference between a family staying
Speaker 1: together or being broken apart.
Speaker 6: But as Ethan.
Speaker 1: Says, there's a very real cost to that pause, and
Speaker 1: children are the ones who pay it. We don't have
Speaker 1: to guess what happens when doctors start ignoring warning signs
Speaker 1: of abuse. The deaths of Olivia Gant and Colin McDaniel
Speaker 1: tell us how that story ends. How Maya's story could
Speaker 1: have ended. The fate of Justina Pelletier, whose parents' lawsuit
Speaker 1: was the precursor to the Kowalskis, shows yet another possible path.
Speaker 1: The Pelletiers lost their lawsuit against the hospital, but they
Speaker 1: did get their daughter back. Now in her twenties, she
Speaker 1: is deeply impacted by her ongoing health issues. It seems
Speaker 1: very unlikely that she will ever live an independent life.
Speaker 1: So the big question now is did the appeal, which
Speaker 1: barely made a blip in the media, put us back
Speaker 1: on the right track.
Speaker 4: The second District's decision in favor of my client was,
Speaker 4: from my perspective, very well written, very lengthy, very thorough
Speaker 4: analysis of the way the law is. Right now, I
Speaker 4: believe that is going to be a vindication of the
Speaker 4: rights and duties of mandatory reporters so long as they're
Speaker 4: staying within the law, complying in good faith with their
Speaker 4: rights and obligations under the law. So my optimistic view
Speaker 4: of this is that the decision in favor of my
Speaker 4: clients is going to vindicate the rights and responsibilities of
Speaker 4: all mandatory reporters. Now the attack for which those of
Speaker 4: us and I put myself in that camp, believe that
Speaker 4: the law should remain broad, that we would like to know,
Speaker 4: we would like the state to be aware of reasonable
Speaker 4: suspicions of abuse, the vast majority of which are screened
Speaker 4: out without any action or any interference of parents' rights.
Speaker 4: But I think if there's going to be an attack
Speaker 4: from the camp that believes these laws are too restrictive,
Speaker 4: that parents should have closer to unfettered rights to make
Speaker 4: decisions of their child, even if from the mind of
Speaker 4: a reasonable person that those decisions are harming a child.
Speaker 4: I think you're going to see the attacks at the
Speaker 4: legislative ent because from the court's perspective, they're interpreting the
Speaker 4: law as it's written. You know, if you read the
Speaker 4: Second District's opinion in favor of my clients, they're doing
Speaker 4: an excellent deep dive into Here's what the statute says,
Speaker 4: here's what the entire statutory scheme is, and based on
Speaker 4: our interpretation of the statute, here's what the decision should
Speaker 4: ultimately be in favor of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital.
Speaker 4: And if people want to undo that, it's not going
Speaker 4: to be by bringing case after case. It's going to
Speaker 4: be lobbying for legs to roll this back. It could
Speaker 4: be rolled back with something as simple as changing the
Speaker 4: criteria of mandatory reporters have to report a reasonable suspicion.
Speaker 4: You could change that definition to say they're only required
Speaker 4: to report substantiated complaints that are verifiable through a panel
Speaker 4: of three medical experts. That would make the standard for
Speaker 4: a report so infinitely high it would only catch those
Speaker 4: that are so egregious. These are societal questions and for
Speaker 4: the past sixty years, society has decided to cast this
Speaker 4: net very broadly. You're at the front line of thisss
Speaker 4: andre and if you're sensing a sea change, you should
Speaker 4: be alarmed.
Speaker 1: As Ethan indicates, I've been keeping an eye on the
Speaker 1: shifts in these conversations around doctor's abuse and parental rights.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's baked into my origin story. My sister
Speaker 1: Megan Carter was covered in my Kicks and Box series
Speaker 1: Do No Harm, along with a whole host of other
Speaker 1: families who claim to have been falsely accused of abuse
Speaker 1: by doctors and Hicks and bog isn't alone. Similar stories
Speaker 1: have made the pages of USA Today, the New York Times,
Speaker 1: Serial Podcast, New York Magazine, and this one really hurt
Speaker 1: Pro Publica. And as I've tracked these stories, I've noticed
Speaker 1: a trend. While cases of false accusations of Munchausen by
Speaker 1: proxy often make big headlines, as they did in the
Speaker 1: Justina Pelletier case in the Mia Kowalski case, there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of other cases being ushered in with them
Speaker 1: that are seemingly much more straightforward physical abuse cases. Munchausen
Speaker 1: by proxy cases are particularly easy to misrepresent in the
Speaker 1: media because of how misunderstood this form of abuses. If
Speaker 1: you leave enough context out, you can frame a perpetrator
Speaker 1: as a heroic, embattled mom, especially because perpetrators themselves have
Speaker 1: often put in years of work to build that image.
Speaker 1: By the time these false accusation stories end up in
Speaker 1: the press, the media coverage of their cases becomes an
Speaker 1: another part of their whole grift, another opportunity to play
Speaker 1: both the victim and the martyr, to pull one over
Speaker 1: on not just the journalist but their entire audience. And
Speaker 1: Munchausen biproxy stories are by their very nature difficult to
Speaker 1: unravel and get to the bottom of. It's also really
Speaker 1: important for anyone reporting on child abuse to understand how
Speaker 1: these systems actually work, because that pause that journalists like
Speaker 1: Neeri are asking for it's already happening. There already are
Speaker 1: systems in place to rule out abuse and protect families
Speaker 1: from being unduly separated from their children. But that part
Speaker 1: doesn't make such a juicy headline.
Speaker 4: So this is my personal opinion on this. It's the
Speaker 4: same when you watch Law and Order and they skip
Speaker 4: jury selection because it's boring and long, and you know,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden you've got a jury and you're starting.
Speaker 4: But that's kind of one of the most important elements
Speaker 4: of this and until you do it, you don't really
Speaker 4: realize how much goes into that process. This is the
Speaker 4: same with the DUP process rights. After a call is made,
Speaker 4: and there's this perception that you know, a doctor or
Speaker 4: any mandatory reporter can pick up the phone and call
Speaker 4: the suspicion of abuse or neglect and within moments the
Speaker 4: child is taken away from the parents. That's not how
Speaker 4: it works. There there are as there were in Maya
Speaker 4: Kwalski's case. There's an investigation. There has to be a
Speaker 4: well documented file that is brought before a judge who's
Speaker 4: going to look at that at multiple stages. The emergency stage.
Speaker 4: Is this an emergency where the child's at imminent risk
Speaker 4: where I have to put a shelter order in place
Speaker 4: because there's obvious signs of abuse, neglects, sexual abuse, or
Speaker 4: someone threatening to take the child into hospice to put
Speaker 4: them under. Is this a situation where you know I
Speaker 4: can do something temporary by saying, like, you know, here's
Speaker 4: an injunction against giving this medication. But everybody cool off
Speaker 4: and come back in a week, and you know the
Speaker 4: child's going home with the parents, And so your listeners
Speaker 4: have to remember that there's a lot of due process.
Speaker 4: And from my experience, and I will admit I don't
Speaker 4: have a lot of experience in front of the dependency court,
Speaker 4: but from my what I would admit to be somewhat
Speaker 4: limited experience, the judges are very reluctant to start interfering
Speaker 4: with parents' rights unless they have to. And the other
Speaker 4: thing I would tell you is, yes, I can completely
Speaker 4: understand a situation of a mandatory reporter thinking, Okay, the
Speaker 4: child is confided in me that you know, dad spanks them, right,
Speaker 4: something that I think reasonable minds in society can think.
Speaker 4: There's degrees of that, and maybe I don't spank my kids,
Speaker 4: but we're not going to start separating every child from
Speaker 4: their parent who gets a swat on the butt, even
Speaker 4: if I don't think that's appropriate behavior. But if you
Speaker 4: don't call in something that's setting off your alarm bells,
Speaker 4: how do you know that's not the fourth or fifth
Speaker 4: time that child's confided in somebody? Why wouldn't you let
Speaker 4: the agencies that are trained to track these think, huh,
Speaker 4: that's the fifth time? Now? That I've got a call
Speaker 4: from five different teachers saying that that kid was subject
Speaker 4: to some type of corporal punishment at home that made
Speaker 4: the child uncomfortable. Maybe we should investigate this because these
Speaker 4: kids now come forward five times, and so that's the
Speaker 4: type of thing that when you get rid of the
Speaker 4: reasonable suspicion standard, we were also getting rid of the
Speaker 4: ability of trained professionals to track whether there's a pattern
Speaker 4: that may, in isolation not seem threatening to the welfare
Speaker 4: of a child or a vulnerable adult, but over time
Speaker 4: lets them track potential problems.
Speaker 1: Do you think that medical professionals would still report if
Speaker 1: they weren't required by law, but they knew that they
Speaker 1: would be protected by the law.
Speaker 4: In my experience having gone through this, perhaps the most
Speaker 4: heroic thing that I've heard from my clients that participated
Speaker 4: in Maya Kowalski's case, who were raked over the coals
Speaker 4: in the court of public opinion, raked over the coals
Speaker 4: in a biased movie that gave no effort to give context,
Speaker 4: intentionally concealed deposition testimony that would have put the hospital
Speaker 4: in a much more favorable light, were dragged into a
Speaker 4: forum and subject to intense public scrutiny. When you ask
Speaker 4: them was this worth it? Their response is if it
Speaker 4: helped a child get onto a road where they detox
Speaker 4: from drugs that could have potentially killed them, put out
Speaker 4: on the road where they're running, where they're back in school,
Speaker 4: where they're able to maximize their potential, I would do
Speaker 4: it again. So you know, when you say all healthcare providers,
Speaker 4: you know, of course there are some that are going
Speaker 4: to wash their hands at this situation. But when you
Speaker 4: really look at the people that have dedicated their lives
Speaker 4: to pediatrics, they're not in it for the money. There
Speaker 4: are much more lucrative areas of medicine that people could
Speaker 4: go into. I am optimistic that if you tweaked the law,
Speaker 4: you would still get a lot of people on the
Speaker 4: pediatric side that would err on doing what they needed
Speaker 4: to do to protect the child, so long as they
Speaker 4: knew that they had statutory protections should their reasonable suspicion
Speaker 4: be opposed by somebody.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Munchausen biproxy cases come to a head in a
Speaker 1: dramatic moment the way that Maya's case did, but it's
Speaker 1: always preceded by a pattern of abuse over time. But
Speaker 1: so many cases in these compendiums of falsely accused parents
Speaker 1: are not much Housen by proxy cases, but cases of
Speaker 1: abusive head trauma, a form of child abuse that, unlike
Speaker 1: Munchausen by proxy, involves a specific incident and about which
Speaker 1: there is a huge degree of medical and scientific consensus
Speaker 1: on how to diagnose. So how are these stories ending
Speaker 1: up in the same bucket as Munchausen by Proxy. Though
Speaker 1: the Kowalski case is the main focus of Take Care
Speaker 1: of Maya, the film widens its lens to four other
Speaker 1: families who claim they've also been falsely accused of abuse
Speaker 1: by the child abuse pediatrician doctor Sally Smith, and as
Speaker 1: the credits role, a montage of families from around the
Speaker 1: country place these parents also say they've been falsely accused
Speaker 1: by doctors. Here's reporter Daphne Chen in Take Care of Maya.
Speaker 3: It was January twenty nineteen when I hit publish on
Speaker 3: that piece about the Ki family, and I kind of
Speaker 3: thought I'd move on to the next thing. But that
Speaker 3: was when the call started coming in and the email
Speaker 3: started coming in, and I realized that this was a
Speaker 3: lot bigger than just the Kowalskis. I'm sitting at my
Speaker 3: desk and I start hearing from more and more families,
Speaker 3: people who had gone to the doctor for help for
Speaker 3: their kids and then became the target of the system.
Speaker 3: These families walked in hoping for help for their child,
Speaker 3: and some of them walked out a handcuffs.
Speaker 1: And this helps frame Jack Kowalski's legal crusade as addressing
Speaker 1: a systemic injustice. He's not just dragging his traumatized children
Speaker 1: through a highly publicized, years long legal battle for a payday.
Speaker 1: He's there on behalf of all false accused parents who've
Speaker 1: been victimized by the system. Here's Viviana Graham, one of
Speaker 1: the other parents featured in the film.
Speaker 3: This young girl, Maya represents hope for all of us
Speaker 3: and bringing Sally Smith down the system down.
Speaker 1: This is the framing throughout the varied media stories and
Speaker 1: lawsuits around the country, out of control child abuse, pediatricians
Speaker 1: falsely accusing parents is a systemic issue that needs reform.
Speaker 1: I started off reporting on the Miya Kowalski case from
Speaker 1: the outside, following the trial and reading huge piles of
Speaker 1: legal documents. But then midway through my reporting, I got
Speaker 1: a voicemail.
Speaker 4: Hi, Andrea, this is Patrick. I am doctor Sally Smith's son.
Speaker 1: The media at this time was excoriating doctor Sally Smith,
Speaker 1: the child abuse pediatrician in the Mia Kawalski case, calling
Speaker 1: her vile names, and criticizing every minute of tape from
Speaker 1: her depositions. Seemingly every family who'd ever been involved in
Speaker 1: a case that she'd provided an evaluation for sprang forth
Speaker 1: to claim that it was not their children who'd been
Speaker 1: the victims, but they themselves, innocent parents who'd suffered at
Speaker 1: the hands of doctor Smith. I was the lone voice
Speaker 1: in the media who seemed to understand that, far from
Speaker 1: being the villain of the Maya Kowalski story, Sally Smith,
Speaker 1: along with the care team at Johns Hopkins All Children's,
Speaker 1: had been one of its heroes. People were not happy
Speaker 1: with me for this take. In fact, my reporting on
Speaker 1: doctor Smith landed me my very first death threats. After
Speaker 1: the trial was over and the quarter billion dollar verdict rendered,
Speaker 1: I flew down to Florida to interview doctor Smith. By
Speaker 1: the time I sat down with her, I knew the
Speaker 1: Kowalski case up down in sideways, and of course this
Speaker 1: was Munchausen by proxy my area of expertise, But I
Speaker 1: became curious about the other four families in take Care
Speaker 1: of Maya who were alleging that they were victims of
Speaker 1: doctor Smith. There was one story that really stuck with me,
Speaker 1: in particular that of the sole male voice in this cohort,
Speaker 1: a Florida man named John Stewart, who claims he was
Speaker 1: falsely accused of the murder of fifteen month old Nolan Kelly.
Speaker 1: Here he is in Take Care of Maya.
Speaker 9: I spent over three hundred days in jail before they
Speaker 9: finally dropped the charges. They ruined my life because of it.
Speaker 1: In addition to his fleeting soundbites in the film, John
Speaker 1: inserted himself into the courtroom drama by showing up on
Speaker 1: the day doctor Sally Smith testified. He confronted her outside
Speaker 1: of the courthouse and filmed the aftermath, which was shared
Speaker 1: on TikTok.
Speaker 9: She's evil, she's a liar, she's in malpracticed.
Speaker 4: Sally.
Speaker 9: She freaking charged me with a crime that I did
Speaker 9: not commit. That medical evidence clearly shows that I was innocent,
Speaker 9: and she has never been held accountable. She's freaking medically
Speaker 9: kidnapped Maya Kowalski. She needs to be held accountable. The
Speaker 9: fact that you, as a deputy, are not arresting her
Speaker 9: disgusts me and disturbs me on every level. She has
Speaker 9: fucking killed people. She has literally killed people. She has
Speaker 9: freaking abused children, She has harmed children.
Speaker 4: I am reporting this to you.
Speaker 9: I want her arrested for that. Please arrest her for that.
Speaker 9: She is illegally kidnapped numerous children, she has illegally imprisoned
Speaker 9: numerous parents without any medical evidence, and she has not
Speaker 9: been held accountable. And I'm begging anybody in law enforcement
Speaker 9: to do their job and hold that evil, psychopath, narcissistic
Speaker 9: scumbag accountable.
Speaker 1: There were almost no details in the film about what
Speaker 1: happened to Nolan, Kelly or any of the other children.
Speaker 1: But on my way to interview doctor Sally Smith two
Speaker 1: years ago, I read the media coverage of John's case.
Speaker 1: The most thoroughly reported account of John's case was in
Speaker 1: the Sarasota Herald Tribune. It featured four pictures of John,
Speaker 1: two of which showed him in his military uniform. There's
Speaker 1: only one picture of Nolan. He's standing outside with one
Speaker 1: of his siblings, pantiless, as one year olds often are.
Speaker 1: He has adorable tufts of curls and his big dark
Speaker 1: eyes look up into the camera. I had so many
Speaker 1: questions about what really happened to Nolan. I was overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by sadness reading about it. He'd been fifteen months old
Speaker 1: when he died, a month younger than my own, and
Speaker 1: sun was then the part of me that was curious
Speaker 1: to know more was drowned out by the part of
Speaker 1: me that couldn't bear too. So I let it go
Speaker 1: until two years later I got a message.
Speaker 10: Well, I was actually watching Dateline and a.
Speaker 7: Show about doctor Vega being involved came on and I
Speaker 7: was like, yeah, I started, So I started, I started
Speaker 7: thinking about some things.
Speaker 9: So then I asked them, you know about.
Speaker 10: My occasion in particular at chat EPT, and it brought
Speaker 10: up your podcast. So I looked at it, listened to it,
Speaker 10: and saw that I felt that you were basically defending
Speaker 10: Sally Smith erroneously. So yeah, so that's that's why I
Speaker 10: reached out to y'all, because I didn't feel that that.
Speaker 11: It was right that she.
Speaker 10: Basically got to lie.
Speaker 1: Again coming up this season on, nobody should believe me.
Speaker 1: I think inevitable conclusion that this is not accidental trauma in.
Speaker 6: The Childmy ruled this a homicide. Right.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: One of the main problems with the system is that
Speaker 1: it has focused so much on poor people that it
Speaker 1: ends up really missing serious cases of abuse.
Speaker 11: Then the question is just because something makes sense, is
Speaker 11: it true?
Speaker 12: These things that they introduce as speculative is just to
Speaker 12: throw off the court. The court is not a medical arena,
Speaker 12: it's a legal arena.
Speaker 5: Review thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of documents
Speaker 5: about this child and ended up producing a forty five
Speaker 5: page report delineating all of the different ways that there
Speaker 5: was evidence of medical child abuse in the case.
Speaker 12: The arguments were the exact same tactics I had spent
Speaker 12: two years exploring with vaccines. I didn't have to go
Speaker 12: through the whole Let me look into this because I
Speaker 12: recognize them.
Speaker 8: I think he knows exactly what happened. I think blacking
Speaker 8: out is just a cop out excuse. He knows what
Speaker 8: he did is horrific.
Speaker 5: I mean, just watching him, I think he's a dangerous
Speaker 5: person and I think, frankly, if you put this on
Speaker 5: the airways, you may escalate. Parents have extraordinarily strong rights
Speaker 5: in this country, and children are the ones that have
Speaker 5: very very limited rights.
Speaker 3: Come on.
Speaker 7: I mean, if you can't hit your mind around that,
Speaker 7: like there's the snow point evens walking anymore.
Speaker 11: Seriously, the assumption that being with the parent is always
Speaker 11: going to be the best solution, it will always feel
Speaker 11: wrong to me. I will always grieve that I didn't
Speaker 11: get those years in a situation away from my parents.
Speaker 1: Nobody should believe me. Is written, reported, and executive produced
Speaker 1: by Me Andrea dumlop. Our co executive producer is Maria Gossit.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Greta Stromquist. Story editing by Nicole Hill,
Speaker 1: Research and fact checking by Aaron Ajai. Additional research by
Speaker 1: Jesse V Randall, Mixing and engineering by Robin Edgar. Our
Speaker 1: production manager is Nola Carmouche. Music from Blue Dot Sessions,
Speaker 1: Sound Snap and Slipstream. Special thanks this week to Ethan Shapiro.