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Hello, it's Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me. This is our fifth episode of our revisit to our first season of the show. So stay tuned with me afterwards. I'm going to be sharing some reflections and updates.
On what we cover today, I have many thoughts to share on the dad question of it all. So tune in for that. And in the meantime, if you want more from us, you can always subscribe on Patreon or on Apple. Subscribing to the show is the very best way to support us and help keep us on the air, help keep us independent.
Reading and reviewing the show and sharing it wherever you talk to people also really helps, so we appreciate that a great deal. So I will talk to you in just a bit, and in the meantime, here is the episode. Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse, and this content may be difficult for some listeners. If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to MunchausenSupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.
If you are curious about this show and the topic of Munchausen by proxy, follow me on Instagram at Andrea Dunlop. If you would like to hear a second season of this podcast, the best thing you can do is go over to patreon.com and support the show there. We are going to have amazing bonus content that we're going to be releasing both during the season and in between seasons over there, including extended interviews with our experts and
and a companion episode from me each week going behind the scenes of the making of that specific episode, answering any questions for you that come up, and also just talking a little bit about how this content is landing out in the world. So go to patreon.com and search for Nobody Should Believe Me. If monetary support is not an option for you right now, you can also rate and review the podcast on Apple and share on your social media. Word of mouth is so important for podcasts, and we really appreciate it.
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Did you know that I have a new book coming out? True Story. And unlike my previous books, this one actually is a true story. The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy, which I co-authored with friend of the show, Detective Mike Weber, chronicles three of his most harrowing and impactful cases—
Longtime listeners of the show will have some familiarity with these cases, but I promise you will learn so much more about them, and you'll also just learn so much more about Detective Mike's journey in this arena and also mine. Dr. Mark Feldman, another friend of the show and an esteemed expert in all things Munchausen by proxy, read an early copy, and this is what he had to say about it.
A truly vital, groundbreaking, and riveting contribution to the true crime literature on child abuse. Over the past four decades, I have read just about everything dealing with medical deception, including Munchausen by proxy abuse, and can easily affirm that this immensely readable book is the most important literary work since Professor Roy Meadow coined the Munchausen by proxy term 50 years ago.
And if you don't think that that endorsement from that particular man made me cry, you would be wrong. So the book comes out on February 4th of next year, and now I know what you're thinking. Andrea, why are you talking to me about this right now? February is approximately 100 years from now. We have to do a whole election and whatever else before then. And I hear you, but I'm telling you this now because, as you may know if you have any other authors in your life, pre-orders are
are vital to a book's success and will really affect how our publisher positions and supports the book's launch. So if you think you are going to buy this book, doing so now will really help us out. It's available for pre-order in all formats wherever books are sold, and you can find it at a link in the show notes. I hope you will love it, and I appreciate your support. People believe their eyes.
That's something that actually is so central to this whole issue and to people that experience this, is that we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. If you questioned everything that everyone told you, you couldn't make it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me.
So as we reported on child abuse from the father's point of view, we came across one story that shows how even a case where the evidence is really strong can go wrong. Because of the outcome in this next case, the participants wanted to keep their identities private. And so we're calling the father in this case John and the alleged perpetrator Sarah.
I wanted to share this story because these are the patterns that we keep seeing. And we've learned along the way that this form of abuse happens across socioeconomic backgrounds, across races, different ages, different places in the country, different places in the world. But there are these things with all that variety that keep showing up again and again.
Just as with Hope, Sarah had not only lied about her children's health, but lied about her own health, her professional background, and there were other lies throughout the course of their marriage. My producer Tina and I sat down with John and his new wife when we traveled to Fort Worth to interview people for this podcast. I was immediately struck by how warm and open John was with us and how generous he was with his story because I knew it wasn't going to be an easy one for him to tell.
He told us about when he had been a small business owner in the Fort Worth area and when he'd first met his ex-wife, Sarah. She had seemed lovely and normal, attractive woman when he first got to know her. She told John that she had worked as a nurse in a NICU and just loved kids. But as it turns out, this was one of the earlier lies John uncovered.
She had no medical education, had no nursing degree, and purported herself to be a nurse when my son was born. And she said, "Well, no, I've worked here. I don't think I ever said I was a NICU nurse." So she went into denial that she had ever said it. And under those circumstances with just having a new baby, I didn't press the point. It didn't seem-- it seemed like she was
embellishing her story originally, but then I learned the truth and found out that it was what I would consider to be just a person trying to make themselves seem more important than they were. At this point, John had begun to have some suspicions, but with an infant son that was coming home from the hospital, he was completely overwhelmed. When they arrived home after Jimmy was out of the NICU,
Sarah moved into Jimmy's room to keep an eye on him. Most mothers can relate to having a brand new baby, especially if it's your first, and being really nervous about every breath they take. I think even if your child hasn't had any complications, a lot of us feel that way in the beginning. However, this went on a little bit longer than most people would have expected. And especially after Sarah became pregnant with their second child and they had their second child,
John began to become concerned that Sarah was actually neglecting their younger child. So as Sarah fixated on Jimmy, John took primary parenting responsibilities. And then something very strange happened. John noticed something disturbing on Sarah's computer. She left the computer open and she had been communicating on the computer with her ex-husband.
about sexual episodes and described in detail having just been with him. In fact, as it turned out, I learned later that she was just with him, came to lunch with me in a sweater that he had purchased for her. Here's Mark Feldman, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama and author of the book Dying to Be Ill. A common thing
Underpinning is deceptiveness and impulsivity and poor judgment. And that kind of person is likely to engage in all kinds of behaviors, whether it's infidelity, lying about aspects of their lives that may not even involve illness in any way.
When it's severe, we call it pseudologia fantastica, which is a Latin term for pathological lying, where the person mixes some truth with fiction, which makes for the best lie in a sense. It's really hard to tease apart what's true and what isn't.
Amidst all of this drama, John and Sarah eventually got a divorce. And Sarah hired a lawyer. Unfortunately for John, he did not. Because Sarah, by all accounts of those who knew her, was an attractive, persuasive, smart woman who had the backing of a really wealthy family. That's a tough thing to come up against from a legal standpoint.
Sarah reassured John as many times as he needed to hear it that she was not out to separate him from the kids, that even if she technically had full custody, she would let him see them as often as he wanted. She knew he was a good dad, and he really didn't feel worried that she was out to separate him from his kids. John just figured that this was the easiest way to go and didn't want to end up in a long, drawn-out court battle.
In 2008, when John and Sarah were divorcing, John believed he'd have joint custody of their children until one day, Sarah took their son to a party. It was a social gathering at some friend's house where there was drinking involved. It was actually a pajama party that she had attended with friends to meet other people. An adult pajama party. An adult pajama party. And the kids were left upstairs to...
to play by themselves. And it's interesting to note that the family that was hosting the party, we were both friends with when we were married.
And at the times that they had other in-home social gatherings, you know, parties and so forth, Christmas and so forth, they had always had someone to watch the children upstairs. And this time that did not occur. There was no one to watch the children. And the boys were climbing on the second story rail.
I was at work and I received a phone call at work of what happened. So I raced to the location and he had already been care flighted. Although he was nearer the Cooks Children's Hospital, he was care flighted to one of the Dallas facilities, according to my
my ex-wife at that point, that was a better facility for him to go to. And so I quickly left from that location and drove to Dallas, which is a bit of a drive. And first time that I saw him, he was in the hospital in Dallas. - Five-year-old Jimmy was treated at the hospital and sent home after about three days.
When we left the hospital, he rode with his grandparents and mother, and I drove separately, and they were headed to my house where he was going to stay with me and her. And once we got to the house, she had changed her mind, and my son was in the arms of his grandmother, and they...
completely blocked me from getting anywhere near him and ultimately got in the car and drove away. I cried.
Our relationship became very strained after that. He was not allowed in my home. He was not allowed in my personal care for a long time. And whenever he was with me, even after that point, she would give me a whole laundry list of how to take care of him and would always complain that I was putting him in dangerous situations. And he came with so many medications.
I mean, that was one of the things that really came out. He had about 15 different medications that she had him on, or the doctors, I should say, had him on, because she had told one doctor of his symptoms. That doctor would tell her, well, he doesn't have this, so he must not have that particular thing. She would go to the next doctor, add the symptoms that he needed to have,
to the next doctor. The entire focus became your son and his medical. The entire focus became on my son and his medical problems. She liked to be the person who knew what was going on. Even when I went to doctor's appointments with her, we would get into arguments because my response was always,
Well, he doesn't have that symptom at my house. Well, he doesn't have that problem when he's with me. You know, in fact, I even had him riding a bike and riding, you know, one of these little scooters that the kids have. And so that was terrible. That was just terrible that I let him do anything where he could fall.
Many other dads, I think, who are living with the perpetrator and are subject to, as you described, this really intense manipulation day in, day out, that they're just so baked in it that it takes them a while to sort of come up for air. And that's actually really understandable. Yeah.
Here's Detective Mike Weber, who investigated this case. The main thing for the public, I think, to understand about these investigations is this is abuse. It is physical abuse. It is psychological abuse. It is emotional abuse. Many times it's educational abuse. It is long-term torture of these kids and using the medical establishment to commit that torture.
Even though John observed a healthy son every time he spent time with Jimmy, Sarah continued to insist
insist that he was having every medical issue under the sun. Complications from his head trauma that she said he had following a coma that he was allegedly in after the fall led to a brain shunt being put in his skull to relieve fluid off the brain after he developed a
a condition called normal pressure hydrocephalus, a disorder which is almost never found in children. John would later learn. At this point, Jimmy's shunt had become infected, so Sarah took him to the hospital.
They suspected that he might not actually need that brain shunt, and they shut it off. After they shut it off, they realized that, in fact, he did not need it. And Sarah was not very happy with this development. So she took him back to a hospital up north where the doctors were more credulous and had the brain shunt put back in.
In addition to all of the medical back and forth, she's also claiming that he's developed developmental disorders, that he's autistic. She has him in a special school that's attached to the Children's Hospital in Texas where she'd been taking him, claiming that he's never going to lead a normal life. Given how much more credulous the doctors up north were of Sarah's claims, she continued to bring Jimmy there for treatment hundreds of miles away from where his dad lived.
And given the custody agreement that John had agreed to back when he was on good terms with Sarah, he was unable to see his son as often as he would like. And often their visits were confined to video chats in between procedures that Jimmy was having at this hospital. Sarah was pursuing treatments for Jimmy in two separate states. On the Texas side, this landed on Detective Mike Weber's desk.
And that's when I met with CPS and law enforcement about the case, and they went on to explain to me what Munchausen by proxy medical child abuse was all about.
So how did that land on you when they explained that to you? I cried. I called one of her relatives who I knew and talked with her, and she told me that I need to get an attorney immediately and get to the bottom of it. John finally had custody of his children. During the investigation, the court ordered me to have custody. She had supervised visitation during that period.
So I did have custody of the children for two years. When you took your son and your other child, how did his health do under your care? I took him immediately to the local hospital in my county, took him to see one of the highest respected doctors at that hospital, and she immediately took him off his medications. That was the first thing that happened.
He was on medications for a variety of different things. He was on antipsychotic medications. He was on medications that just made him so drowsy on the way to school. As I was driving him to school in the morning when she still had custody and he was at my home sometimes, when I would drive him to school, you could just see him gloss over. You know, his whole expression changed from a bubbling boy
to a drugged child who was at that point unable to comprehend a lot of things. And once I got custody of him, he was immediately taken off the medication. Where was your mind in all this as you're watching your son blossom from this medically fragile child to a healthy child?
that I was right, that everyone around me was right, that she was doing something awful to him that was abusive and stunted his childhood. He was not able to play sports. He was in a special needs school.
We immediately got him enrolled in the fifth grade at a local elementary school. We signed him up for baseball. In fact, I took two or three months off from my job and got him moving forward in terms of his skills.
The one thing I remember is we went and played pitch and catch and he, you know, and I would be the catcher and he would be the pitcher and then I would be the pitcher and he would be the catcher. And, you know, I would hit him fly balls and, you know, grounders and all the things that dads do with their kids. I took a few months off to really help him gain his strength.
make up for lost time. And like I say, he was put in the fifth grade at a local elementary school where he did well.
The evidence in the case against Sarah was strong, and Mike Weber was working it on the Texas side, and he was the most experienced detective in the country on these cases. But this case had incredible complexities given the fact that surgeries had happened in two separate states. To make matters worse, in 2015, a huge change in leadership at Detective Weber's office threw a big wrench in the case.
Mike tried to do something through the Texas court and, you know, the Texas court ultimately said, "Gosh, there's no law against this." She broke the law in Minnesota, not here in Texas. And Minnesota didn't pursue any legal charges against her for breaking the law in Minnesota. The family court system, once they dropped the charges against her, decided she was also innocent.
So they were willing to put the kids back with her, and it became just a normal custody case. Ultimately, because they felt like she was losing the normal custody case, the grandparents stepped in, and they decided they would be a better place for the kids to live.
And the judge in this particular case wouldn't listen to evidence about medical child abuse. As far as she was concerned, that was a criminal issue and she was either guilty of it or not guilty of it. And if she was not guilty of it, then it didn't need to be brought up. And all the things that mom had done were purportedly in the best interest of the child because she was innocent.
So family court, you know, they don't even want to hear CPS. They literally took CPS out of our case, would not listen to CPS. The guardian ad litem and a counselor and the case manager for the court
all thought that I was being a vindictive ex-husband. On the other hand, the detective and the doctor from the hospital, they were on my side, and we had to come to a decision at that point whether to move forward and let the judge decide what was going to happen or to have a jury trial. We mediated, and I
just because of the cost and the cost to the children, decided to try to get things closed and gave the grandparents custody of the kids. I determined to agree to things in mediation that I wish it could have gone a different direction. I will forever feel like if we laid this out properly,
that a jury would see things very different than what the mediation ultimately turned out to be.
It cost me any relationship at this point with my children. It's been three and a half years since I've seen my children or communicated with them. I even send them gifts on their birthdays and Christmas. I send them checks so that they, you know, know that dad is doing something. None of the checks have been cashed. So as far as cost to me, it's ongoing. Do you think...
that the interventions that happened and the time that your children were with you and that sort of interruption of what sounded like escalating behavior on your ex-wife's part, even though it didn't end the way that it ought to have ended, do you think that that made a difference? I think it saved my son's life. It cost him greatly.
As far as family ties go, not being in contact with his father, it cost him greatly there, but it changed the outcome of his life.
getting out of mom's care for a short time, saw them how the world could really be what a, if you will, normal child has as far as opportunities. It put him in regular school. It put him in sports. It did all of those things. Sadly, he is still called a special needs child by mom and sister, but it saved his life. That's not nothing, is it?
No, that's not nothing. It's what you hold on to. When we recorded this interview two years ago, the dad we called John in this story did not want his real name used. But I have an update for you. Today is November 1st, 2022. I spoke to John last week about some recent developments, and he told me because of what's happening with his son now, he no longer wants to remain anonymous. My name is Doug Welch. I am the father of Duke Welch.
And his mother's name is Mary Welch. Doug filled me in on the details about what's happening now with his son, and we'll release that conversation in its entirety in an upcoming episode. This next story is really different because whereas most of the stories of Munchausen by proxy that I've read about, the fathers of the children were married to the perpetrators and deeply involved with them, in Brian Crawford's case, he barely knew the mother of his child.
Ryan Crawford is a young, handsome dad with a big, warm smile, and he just exudes good-naturedness. The first time that I watched an interview with him, I found myself in tears just listening to him recount his story and how hard he had pushed for justice for his son.
Ryan told me about the first time he met his son's mother, Kayleen. I went out with some friends to a club and just hanging out, having some drinks. And she was there and, you know, I thought she was nice looking and I approached her and, you know, we seemed to have a good conversation and we exchanged numbers and everything.
We started communicating. Initially, I was just saying, "Oh, you know, she's a nice looking woman. You know, she seems to, you know, take care of herself." I didn't grasp any type of awkwardness or any type of strange behaviors. I didn't actually see that, obviously, you know, just meeting her. You know, it was just more of, "Hi, how are you doing?" And, you know, "Hello, my name's Kayleen." We met up maybe once. I think we did dinner.
The conversation at that point still seemed on par as far as just telling me her background. A lot of the background now that I know so much was a lie. But as far as her going to school, her graduating, having a track scholarship, that part may be true. I haven't verified that.
But, you know, the initial stages of meeting anyone is an interview process. They're going to try to sell you the best them. You know, they're going to tell you everything that you want to hear. After they met, Ryan and Kayleen went out a couple of times, but ultimately Ryan just didn't see a future with her. I just felt that she just wasn't the one for me.
If something was off, the vibe was off, the energy was off, the communication was off. I always, you know, had the intuition just to back up and just, you know, just keep on moving. And so we kind of lost communication after the first two or three dates. And then at some point you get a call from her. She called me August 31st, 2008, because it was my birthday. She called me to wish me happy birthday.
And when she called to wish me happy birthday, I was surprised to hear from her. And I said, oh, thank you. And she said, well, I would love to take you out tonight. And I said, oh, well, I already have plans. I'm going out with my friends. We're going to a club, have some drinks and just enjoy my birthday. You
You know, she paused and she said, well, how about I come after? And, you know, being young, I knew what that meant. So after I end up leaving the club, she ended up coming over later that night. And that's how Christopher became in the making. Literally, we did not see each other again. That initial night was my fault for some effect. Knowing that I wasn't interested, I should have never had her.
to even come over. But, you know, I blame hormones and me being young on, you know, that situation. Kayleen reached out to Ryan again a couple months later. And this time, it was a very different kind of phone call. I missed that phone call. But my instincts told me exactly what she was calling me for.
I was hoping I was wrong, but, you know, I was not. And, you know, I called her back and, you know, she told me that, you know, she thinks the possibilities of her being pregnant is likely. Inside my heart was just racing because I just had a child two and a half years ago. And I'm like, wait a minute. At the same time, the shock mainly came from her telling me that she was on birth control. And come to find out,
From her own mouth, she said that she had just started taking it that week. At this point, who really knows if there was even any birth control at all. You know, as a man, I just try to take responsibility and just be like, you know, okay. She couldn't have done this without me. So Ryan and Kayleen went back and forth about their options, and ultimately Kayleen decided to go forward with the pregnancy. And Ryan was fully supportive of this. There's not too much for us to actually talk about because, you know, there was already...
no interest there. It was something that happened and now we have to take responsibility for our actions, but it was just in the best interest at the time just to wait until she called me or wait until the child was born and then I'll just end up putting myself on child support, get visitation worked out. But she called me like two or three months later claiming that she was in the hospital and that she had a hundred and
10 degree temperature. So she was saying she was sick, and obviously that's really scary if you're four months at that point probably pregnant. She claimed to be in the hospital almost the whole pregnancy.
And there was even times that she said that she was going to have the baby, you know, that she was going to be induced and she would never call me. So, you know, I would end up finding out the next week that it didn't happen. It was stressful, like actually trying to go through the just the whole pregnancy thing. You know, finally, she called me out the blue.
Ryan had an extremely busy life. He already had a child. And Kayleen was a veritable stranger. But nonetheless, he was really excited to meet his new son.
He was a preemie, so he was six weeks early. But see, I never knew the exact date because, you know, it was she was always saying different dates. You know, she was always saying that she's going to be induced or, you know, she's going to go into labor. And none of those things ever happened until, you know, she finally called me for the last time and said that, you know, hey, come up to the hospital. But I still try to make it seem as if in my head that, you know, hey,
this is someone that you don't know. They don't even know you. So what do you expect, Ryan? I mean, it's going to be like a lot of tension and a lot of misunderstanding because you don't even know this one and she doesn't know you. So I tried to downplay it thinking that maybe I was overreacting a lot of the times, but, you know, come to find out I was never overreacting.
In the previous stories, the dads didn't want to question the mother of their children because she was someone they loved and trusted.
In Ryan's case, he didn't want to question her because he felt like he didn't know her well enough to question her. As it turns out, how close or distant you are, this behavior in and of itself is so unbelievable that when confronted with it, it's almost impossible to wrap your head around. When Christopher was born, of course, being six weeks early, he has to be in the incubator.
and been in the incubator. He was fine. The doctor said he was fine. He did have a tube in his nose because six weeks early, you know, they need help eating. So that's completely fine for a preemie. I went up there to the hospital quite a bit. No issues. Obviously, she can't control anything in the incubator. You know, that's the doctors and the nurses. So when did you first start to suspect that
something was really wrong. The problems didn't actually start until our child actually got out of the incubator. She would complain that he needs to try like 20 different milks. Every milk that he would take that he would regurgitate.
And the times I fed him, he was just fine. But when she would call me or when I'm not there, she would say, oh, he's regurgitating milk. And so she would start taking him to the hospital maybe once every two weeks, if not more.
Things just progressed where she still was just taken up to the hospital time after time at the time where she would say that he was having breathing issues. He was having fevers. He was just not eating at all. He was crying all night. Just anything and everything. And I remember one time I went to the hospital with her in the emergency room and she
He was so tiny, they couldn't find a vein in his arm, so they had to put the IV in his head.
I was okay with that because I mean, these are what the doctors are saying. They're saying we need to put IV in the head to give him, you know, the nutrients he needs. And she was so adamant about making sure that that didn't happen. I don't want that to happen. What if you miss a vein? And that's so strange that at that point that she was so trying to be so careful about
But, you know, as you progress, you know, she wasn't careful at all. But, you know, I had to end up making that decision because the doctor was like, "We need to do this."
Even though Kayleen's behavior was making Ryan increasingly nervous, he really wanted to be in his son Christopher's life and he wanted to secure his place as Christopher's dad, essentially. So he kept going through the steps to make sure that he had custody rights to Christopher and that he was all set up to contribute to child support.
When I would try to see Christopher, she wouldn't allow me to. It was always, he's asleep. He is sick. He's been in the hospital for the last 10 days, even though she didn't call me. Or, you know, whatever the case may be, it was always something to do with sickness. And that kept me from actually being able to see Christopher.
As Ryan's custody case worked its way through family court, Ryan became increasingly frustrated with Kayleen's attempts to block him from seeing Christopher. And he was becoming suspicious that Christopher didn't really have all of the medical ailments Kayleen was claiming he had. That judge heard all these things and automatically assumed that my son was disabled.
And I was like, judge, I never heard of any of these things. I don't know what she's talking about. Like, I'm here just to establish, you know, put myself on child support, get visitation. I have no clue what she's talking about. He paused for recess, took us back to his chambers and start telling me that, Ryan, you know, you're going to have to accept, you know, your son, the things that he's going through. And that Kayleen is saying that he's probably going to need leg braces. He may not ever walk again.
And I'm like, what? He was looking at me as a deadbeat father that doesn't care about his child. You know, I get it that you see some of those come through the courthouse, but every father is not the same.
Kayleen is responsible for Christopher's medical care. As Ryan's pushing to continue to try and get his rights as a father recognized, every time Kayleen shows up before a judge, she's tearfully listing out this litany of medical problems that Christopher allegedly has, even though Ryan's never heard of any of it.
We saw the district judge maybe three times, three different times, and each time he's dying. I don't know how the judge didn't catch on, but he was dying every single time. The last time that we saw that judge, the judge asked me, "Ryan, do you want to see your child one last time before he dies?"
i said judge my son is not dying i don't know what you're talking about and i provided evidence i provided medical paperwork i've been to the doctors nobody is saying what she's saying here in court but she ignored me because kaylene's in the back crying just hollering and she's apologizing to kaylene that you know i brought her here and tells kate lane would you mind if ryan sees his child one last time before he dies
And Kayleen says, "No, I don't want him to see Christopher." And that just stripped my rights from me. That was 2014. At this point, he's four. At some point, you have a big turning point in, I think it was in 2015, when you stumble across some writings from Deanna Boyd in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I felt lost. I felt alone because
Nobody believed me.
Ryan reached out to a nonprofit for legal help. The director told him that what was happening with Kayleen sounded like a case of Munchausen by proxy. I was like, what? I'd never heard of that. And he looked it up for me. And when I read the definition, I said, yeah, this is it. This is exactly what's going on. And he was like, you're going to need to get you a good attorney and try to fight this. I had just got through praying, like, you know, God, please, like, protect Christopher. You know, I was sitting there.
In my apartment, I was on Facebook and bam, an article comes up. My child in my proxy, uh,
I start reading the story. Literally, that was my whole life. Like I saw Christopher, the whole article, obviously with someone different. But, you know, in my mind, everything from the G2 to the wheelchair to all the lies, everything. This is exactly how my son's story goes. I don't even know how this is even possible that my child's mother has somehow mimicked in my mind this whole story.
Even if you read a whole book about Munchausen by proxy, if you haven't experienced it, you're still going to have questions. You're still going to doubt the father because nobody wants to believe it. So after reading the article I post on Facebook, I said, I'm going through this exact same thing with my son's mother. I said, I wish there was somebody to help me. And that's when Michael Weber reached out to me.
I had checked Facebook to see some of the comments, to see what the public perception was, and I saw a comment from Ryan. And his comment was, I'm going through this right now, and no one believes me, and no one will do anything. And it's happening to my son. And, you know, I knew that from my previous involvement in these cases, that that could 100% be true.
So I sent him a private message through Facebook Messenger, just said, "Hey, this is who I am. This is my office number. If you're serious about this and you're not just some internet yahoo, call me at the office on Monday." And I got a call from Ryan.
You know, he told me he was going through a custody situation. You know, that's a red flag against this abuse, right? You have a custody battle. But then he checked pretty much every box about what this abuse is and what I had seen in this abuse in previous cases. Every box. At this point, Christopher was four years old, and he'd been through 13 surgeries. He'd been in a wheelchair. He was fed via a feeding tube.
And all the while, Ryan believed that none of these things were necessary. And this feeling of being a Cassandra screaming into the void and then being cut out of the child's life is so visceral for me to think of Ryan just desperate to save his son.
It's unimaginable. Ryan pushes to get his son re-evaluated by the doctors caring for him to see if any of these health problems are actually legitimate. Finally, CPS submits a petition to have Christopher removed from Kayleen's care and he goes to a children's hospital in Dallas where he's put under observation for a week.
After CPS removes Christopher from Kayleen, all of his health problems seem to melt away. He no longer needs oxygen, he no longer needs a wheelchair, and he can eat on his own perfectly fine without a feeding tube. Detective Mike Weber started messaging with Ryan, but because this was in Dallas, it was not in Detective Mike Weber's jurisdiction. So he reached out to the detective working on the case and tried to help him help Ryan move things forward.
They sat on the case for two years, didn't do anything. I kept emailing them every few months. They kept telling me they're gathering more information, more information, more information. I pretty much gave up because I was just like, they're just going to keep giving me to run around and keep telling me that they're still looking into it. But one day I was at work. I was almost 7 p.m. time I get off. And her first child's father called me and said, Ryan,
They're about to take the kids from Kayleen. My heart just dropped. My tears wanted to come out of my eyes. Like, he hadn't even explained to me exactly what's happened, but I just knew that just taking the kids away, that they were going to be safe. The DA's office was still investigating Kayleen. But instead of sending Christopher to be with Ryan, they put him in foster care.
And I'm like, I'm his father. And they're like, well, he doesn't really know you. What do you mean he doesn't know me? He doesn't know these foster care people. What are you talking about? And they're like, well, with the foster care, we have a training program set up. And, you know, you're not in that program. I'm his father. It strikes me listening to this part of Ryan's story that this is the point where a lot of people would just give up.
Ryan didn't. Ryan kept fighting for his son. In 2017, Ryan and his lawyer headed back to family court once more, but they were still getting Stonewalled. At that point, that's when I knew I had to get in contact with the media. This story is a big enough story where everybody's interested in it. We're going to get this heard.
Ryan remembered the news story that he'd first found on Facebook, the one that had connected him with Mike Weber. It was a story written by investigative journalist Deanna Boyd of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram all about Munchausen by proxy cases.
I told her what was going on. She ended up writing an article. That article went worldwide almost within 24 hours. It was around the world. People from Australia, Japan, everywhere were in my direct messages asking me questions. They were interested in what was going on.
The Dallas mother accused of faking her son's illnesses has just been sentenced to six years in prison. I want to show you some video of Kayleen Bowen-Wright being taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs. This happened just a few minutes ago. In August, she pleaded guilty to injury to a child causing serious bodily injury. Authorities say she subjected her now 10-year-old son to years of needless medical procedures and surgeries.
So this story is really blowing up in the media and you get temporary custody of Christopher. And at this point, there's a criminal investigation happening. I mean, she was charged in 2017 while we're still going through the family court. And she didn't actually go to prison, get convicted until October 2019. Yeah.
Two whole years, and she was able to have access to Christopher during that time period. So what was that time period like for you? Stressful. Like, having to, like, see that woman at all, period. Because for simple fact that we know that these women that choose medical abuse, that abuse these children, that they're master manipulators.
We're dealing with medical abuse. Somebody who truly abuses a child and consciously knows exactly what they're doing. And so with her being able to see Christopher every other week and manipulate him, it just was not in the best interest. He was so young when it happened that all he knows is that he loves his mother. Even though she took advantage of him and
and of his innocence. All he saw was that he had a mother and that would hug him and kiss him and tell him things are going to be all right. So he doesn't see the side that an older child or an adult would see. I still make sure that I don't speak negative.
about her. And I explained to him the consequences of lying, that once you start lying, you have to continue to lie. I don't go too much into... He knows that he was abused, but still at this age, he still doesn't quite understand the magnitude of how serious it was. And he had trauma counseling in the very beginning, and he really has been blessed. God truly washed over him
Christopher has not been to the doctor not one time outside of a physical every year since 2017. No feeding tubes. I had that feeding tube removed, I guess, a week or two after I got to temporary custody. I had that removed because he was eating. So he has no feeding tubes. He has no oxygen. He's just a normal child. It struck me listening to this, what a good dad Ryan is.
Because he understands that even if listening to this story, you can surmise that Kayleen wasn't a loving mother towards Christopher, the love that Christopher felt for Kayleen was still real. The love that all of these people surrounding the perpetrator, their family members, their spouses, and their children especially, the love they feel for that person is real.
And this gave me some insight into one of the things that I think about a lot when it comes to my niece and nephew, and even when it comes to trying to explain to my own daughter this situation when the time comes. How do you explain this to a child? Ryan's years-long battle with the system paid off. Christopher is thriving under his care.
He's completely healthy. He hasn't had any type of medical issues, any feeding issues, any type of disabilities. Nothing like that has happened. His life has truly turned upside down for the better. The only way that you would know that he's been through what he's been through is if you looked at his chest, he has a couple scars. Outside of that, Christopher is your normal, healthy 12-year-old that is enjoying life fondly.
If, like me, you think, hey, I'm still young, I'm cool, I'm with it, but at the same time you find yourself needing to ask your Gen Z co-worker to explain what brat means or give you the etymology of the word feminomenon, it might be a sign that you, my friend, are in perimenopause. So thank goodness for the Hormone Harmony supplement from Happy Mammoth.
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Welcome to another round of Drawing Board or Miro Board. Today we discuss technical diagramming with systems architect Maya. Let's go. First question. You've spent 10 hours slogging over a sequence diagram that should have taken five. Drawing Board or Miro Board? Drawing Board. And if I'm being honest, Miro would probably cut that time down by half. You know, with its AI tools and ready-to-go templates.
Next, your diagrams become so bulky, it's more complex than the solar system. But all it takes is a few clicks and... It's Miro. I've used those technical shape packs way too many times. Now, the final question. Everyone's brought in, but you have to make all these tasks all the time.
the way over in Jira. But wait, it's done. Is it? Miro, easy with its two-way Jira sync. Easy to plot dependencies. Everyone always knows what's up. And she's done it. For a limited time, visit miro.com slash diagram now and get a free business plan trial to unlock even more features like advanced shapes, dependency mapping, and two-way Jira syncing. Get started today at miro.com slash diagram now.
Did you know that I have a new book coming out? True Story. And unlike my previous books, this one actually is a true story. The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy, which I co-authored with friend of the show, Detective Mike Weber, chronicles three of his most harrowing and impactful cases—
Longtime listeners of the show will have some familiarity with these cases, but I promise you will learn so much more about them, and you'll also just learn so much more about Detective Mike's journey in this arena and also mine. Dr. Mark Feldman, another friend of the show and an esteemed expert in all things Munchausen by proxy, read an early copy, and this is what he had to say about it.
A truly vital, groundbreaking, and riveting contribution to the true crime literature on child abuse. Over the past four decades, I have read just about everything dealing with medical deception, including Munchausen by proxy abuse, and can easily affirm that this immensely readable book is the most important literary work since Professor Rory Meadow coined the Munchausen by proxy term 50 years ago.
And if you don't think that that endorsement from that particular man made me cry, you would be wrong. So the book comes out on February 4th of next year, and now I know what you're thinking. Andrea, why are you talking to me about this right now? February is approximately 100 years from now. We have to do a whole election and whatever else before then. And I hear you, but I'm telling you this now because, as you may know if you have any other authors in your life, pre-orders are
are vital to a book's success and will really affect how our publisher positions and supports the book's launch. So if you think you are going to buy this book, doing so now will really help us out. It's available for pre-order in all formats wherever books are sold, and you can find it at a link in the show notes. I hope you will love it, and I appreciate your support.
So obviously hearing from Ryan Crawford and Doug Welch in this episode, and Doug Welch wasn't originally named in this episode. That's an interesting piece of this. Like many of these stories, Doug Welch's story does not have a good outcome. Mary Welch was not ultimately held accountable for her actions. And that was the reason that Doug originally came on anonymously and
And if you listen to the first season when it was originally airing, or if you've listened to it since, you will know that immediately after that interview aired, Doug had a change of heart about being on the show anonymously and told me that he wished he had just said her name.
And so I gave him the opportunity to come back on and do just that. So we have a follow-up interview with Doug, and I will link to that in the show notes. But I felt that was very brave of him to do that and understood his reasoning of why he wanted to have that out there in the world with her real name. And that is, I think, one of the things that eventually inspired me to do that interview.
With my sister's case as well, I think, you know, most of the cases that we cover do not, again, end in a criminal conviction. And many of us feel, as Doug Welch and I do, that the system failed in our cases. And one of the only things that you can do, one of your sort of last pieces of recourse, is to shed light on that and let people know the truth. And then you hope that there are more people watching out for those kids and more people aware of that.
And that is really the reason for doing it. And just listening back to this episode, there are so many things about gender and parenting and the role of mothers versus the role of fathers that come up in these cases. That's one of the pieces that is sort of endless food for thought around this crime. And my feelings about a question I get asked a lot when I'm doing interviews about this topic is why?
such a high percentage of the offenders are females because it's something like 97%, according to the study that's most commonly cited. And I've thought so much about this. I think it has to do with where we give women power in our society. And especially sort of what I've observed since becoming a mom. I now have two children coming to you from the future. At the time of this recording, I had one.
One of the only places we give women unchecked authority in our culture is with regards to the care of children. And abusers abuse power. So, yeah.
if that's where you get power, that's where you're going to abuse it. You know, Dr. Mark Feldman, who is a friend of the show, friend in real life, one of the top experts in really the world on this, always describes this as a crime of opportunity. And so I think that that is really one of the things I've sort of come to understand about why I think, you know, sort of my thesis on why there are so many female offenders. And so then that really calls into question, like, what is a father's responsibility in this situation? And, you know, obviously the
fathers that we interviewed during the season, Fabian Ybarra and George Honeycutt, Ryan Crawford and Doug Welch, are fathers that acted in a protective way and that, to my mind, really did the right thing by their kids. That's not always the case. That's not even mostly the case. You know, according to Mike, he always says he sees about half and half of fathers that
are, you know, step up and are protective and do the hard thing and fathers that just sort of remain in denial and end up being essentially collaborators in the abuse. And, you know, for what it's worth, where you see these crimes happening with male offenders, you know, in cases of physical abuse or child sex abuse, which is mostly male offenders,
You see the same thing with female partners. Some of them really step up and protect the kids and do the hard thing, and then some of them kind of remain in denial. So it's sort of a parallel dynamic, and there are so many parallels between those types of abuse that, you know, that's something that we talk about a lot. But it's very interesting to me to think about this right now in this moment, you know, in 2024.
We have these two huge cases that are really have been in the news a lot for the last several months, one being the Maya Kowalski case and the other being the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case, which really is back in the news cycle because she was just released from prison in December. And you have really interesting, differing dynamics with the fathers in those cases. So,
You know, in the case of Jack Kowalski, who initiated, you know, after Beata died by suicide during the investigation, he initiated this lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children's and got a verdict in their favor. That case is being appealed. We will obviously keep you up to date. But, you know, one of the revelations that came through to me in my reporting on that case, which I did obviously a massive deep dive for season three, is that,
Jack was really very involved in Maya's care in a way that you don't often see with fathers in these cases. You know, while a lot of them, I think, end up being enablers, which is sort of the role I feel that my own brother-in-law has played.
You don't often see them necessarily being as active as Jack Kowalski was. And so when we interviewed Dr. Sally Smith, you know, you really saw that she had come away with that impression after seeing all of the medical records that he was really taking her to like roughly half the appointments. And especially the way that he has continued to insist that she has this disease, insist that, you know, the doctors...
kidnapped her when they separated her from her parents because of the abuse suspicion, you know, all of that sort of doubling down that he's done after the fact, it really makes him very involved in the abuse in a way that I haven't necessarily seen in a lot of other cases. So I think that that is sort of the third option between protective and passive. Then sometimes they are really, you know, involved in that
way. And so whenever you sort of, I sort of see a new element of these cases because this is such an underreported, under-investigated crime, you sort of wonder how many other situations there are that parallel them. So it's pretty often that you see, you know, it could just be a single mom. You know, in the case of Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee Blanchard, Rod Blanchard was very young. He was 17 when Gypsy was born and he was not very involved in her life. He is involved in her life now. They do appear to be really close and they
I think he, you know, has expressed a lot of regrets about not trying harder to be in her life. It's very hard to know sort of how much onus or blame to put on him in that situation. Obviously, you would want a dad to be trying to be involved in their child's life regardless of what was going on in that situation, especially given what was happening to her. You wish he could have intervened. But
But it's also important, I think, to put it in the context of how manipulative these offenders often are. And by all accounts, Dee Dee Blanchard made all efforts in the world to isolate her and Gypsy, and that is a really common dynamic in this abuse. And so I think, you know, there's never anything that's come out about Rod Blanchard that makes me think that he's anything but.
a good guy and is going to be an important part of her support system going forward. So it's very interesting to see those kind of two dynamics in these two huge cases in these stories that have so many parallels but are being metabolized by the public by and large so differently. So much more to say about that at some point.
So I think we will at some point do an entire season that's following a father through a case. You know, these are obviously the people that we hear a lot from. I've heard from so many dads and so many of them, you know, have come to us through Munchausen Support. We do these support groups that we were talking to George Honeycutt about.
Doug Welch has also been involved in those. So it's really, you know, the community that's formed around, especially the people that were on the first season of this podcast, because they were sort of the people that were already involved in this work in some way is just really extraordinary. And I have been really lucky to have kept in touch with so many of them. So thank you for listening and
And let me know your thoughts on all of these huge topics that we have discussed in these last couple episodes. I love hearing from you. So find me on Instagram. Email us at hello at nobody should believe me dot com. And I will talk to you soon. In the next episode, we're going to shift our focus into what the future looks like for people who are victims of this abuse and talk to two extraordinary adult survivors about their experiences.
If you've been listening to this podcast and some of the details sound very familiar to you from your own life or someone that you know, please visit us at MunchausenSupport.com. We have resources there from some of the top experts in the country, and we can connect you with professionals who can help.
Our lead producer is Tina Knoll. The show was edited by Lisa Gray with help from Wendy Nardi. Jeff Gall is our sound engineer. Additional scoring and music by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Shupak. Also special thanks to Maria Paliologos, Joelle Knoll, and Katie Klein for project coordination. I'm your host and executive producer, Andrea Dunlop.
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