Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [115]
“How about plain old child abuse? Assault? Attempted homicide?” Detective Hudson said bitterly.
Amanda nodded, still stroking the furry toy. “It’s certainly a form of child abuse, but the problem is it doesn’t fit neatly into what we call child abuse under the law or any of those other things. Once we had all these tidy organized categories: You had physical abuse, you had molest, you had neglect. Now all of a sudden we have this insidious type of child endangerment whose physical manifestations are hard to distinguish from the behaviors of good mothers who are simply caring for very sick children. You have to understand, the mothers of these children often appear to be extremely loving and deeply concerned. It’s dangerous for doctors, nurses, or social workers to accuse someone of Munchausen by Proxy, because they might be accusing a mother who is innocent. There have been cases where a slow-growing brain tumor caused vomiting or other symptoms that only the mother observed, and it took the doctors some time to find the tumor. If those mothers had been accused of this disorder, it would have been tragic for them and their children. As a society we are hesitant to believe that a mother would harm her own child. It’s only the worst of these Munchausen cases that even make it to court. Most are so borderline that the prosecutor doesn’t have a chance convincing a jury that a mother deliberately tried to harm her sick child, that indeed she was the one making the child sick.”
She set the toy panda down and picked up a turtle. She took a pair of scissors, cut the tiny tag off the ear and threw it away. “I give these to the deputy DA in charge of the child abuse unit. Helps the kids to have something to hold when they testify. They’re the perfect size for little hands.” She put down the turtle and picked up a pale pink pig. “I cut the tags off so crazy adult collectors won’t steal them.”
“So you’re telling us that lots of mothers get away with killing their babies with this Munchausen thing?” Detective Hudson broke in.
She tossed the pig in the detagged pile and picked up a bright red lobster. “Look, child abuse cases, even ones with real evidence of physical injury, are hard for juries to watch and rule on. Like I just said, something deep inside all of us does not want to believe or face the fact that some mothers hurt their children. And when there’s not always overt evidence of harm and the mother appears loving... well, what can I say? More often than not, they get away with it. That’s if they’re ever discovered, which in most of these cases they aren’t.” Her mouth turned down with sadness as she clipped the tag off the lobster’s claw.
“But why would anyone do that to their own child?” I said.
“The question of the year,” she said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the desk. “I’ll give you the fifty-cent lecture. It has to do with power. Not having it and wanting it. Oh, there’s lots of deeper issues, but it really comes down to that. Surprisingly, most of the mothers who do this have not come from overtly abusive homes. But they often come from homes where the father is emotionally unattached. Somewhere in the psyche of this young girl—and by the way, the majority of people who have this disorder are women—she develops what we call a ‘character perversion.’ In a nutshell, to get positive attention from her doctor, who is an authority figure substitute, she uses her baby and its imagined or manufactured illness. Their babies aren’t even people to them, but more like objects used to gain them what they want, which is attention and praise. Some researchers have even gone so far as to compare the babies to fetish objects.”
“But she killed her babies,” Detective Hudson said. “If they were what she needed for attention, why would she kill them?”
“Very good, Detective,” Amanda said, nodding.