S02 Ep02: What do we do about Brittany?

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Speaker 2 If Alyssa was wanting attention and Brittany didn't want to give it, then she would tell her she was spoiled and pick her up and put her in the other room.

Speaker 2 If she was acting out, crying, screaming, she would yell at her and call her a brat and tell her that she was spoiled. Things like that.

Speaker 2 But just, and to me, my kids, you know, whenever they were one, they just wanted to be held. She didn't want to do that.

Speaker 2 She wanted her to go away so she could talk or didn't want her to interrupt her. And whenever she would interrupt, then she would be really rough with her.

Speaker 1 Would she get physical with her also?

Speaker 2 That was

Speaker 2 it.

Speaker 2 She did at one point, yes. And that's whenever I finally called CPS.

Speaker 1 People believe their eyes.

Speaker 1 That's something that actually is so central to this whole issue and to people that experience this, is that

Speaker 1 we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.

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Speaker 1 This season, we're covering the case of Brittany Phillips. If you haven't listened to episode one yet, please do that before diving into today's episode.

Speaker 1 At the top of the episode, we heard from Heather Harris.

Speaker 1 She was originally an online friend of Brittany's who got close to her in real life, and she was telling us about how she reached her breaking point and finally called CPS.

Speaker 1 There's this really interesting dichotomy in these cases where for most of them, like Hopiobara, like a lot of the women we talked about in season one, there's this really fascinating duality of to other people, they look like really loving mothers.

Speaker 1 And that's part of how they're able to pull it off. But Brittany didn't look like a loving mother.
And in fact, she looked more like what we can right away recognize as an abusive mother.

Speaker 1 Heather Harris, you might remember from the previous episode, was a friend who'd met Brittany online as part of a support group for new moms.

Speaker 1 And they ended up getting together a number of times in real life. One of these times was at a big get-together at Heather's house.
And during that party, Heather ended up documenting some evidence.

Speaker 2 The most time that I spent with her was during that one really big meetup where we had a lot of the other mothers there. And there were a lot of children, too.
I mean, it was a lot of chaos.

Speaker 2 I mean, there was kids all over the place. And I think everybody spent a good five or six hours out at my house that day.

Speaker 2 We were there for quite a long time because we had snacks and lunch and, you know, playtime and everything else.

Speaker 2 And I think that was the day that was the turning point because she had stated multiple times that she couldn't eat. And I would catch her eating.

Speaker 1 Did you confront? Brittany when you saw that discrepancy?

Speaker 2 Well, the only time I confronted her that day, because she told me, well, if you can get her to eat, then get her to eat.

Speaker 2 And then whenever she would start to eat, she'd go over and take it away and say she's going to choke and she'll get sick from it and she'll end up in the hospital.

Speaker 2 And because I don't think that she thought she was going to get to eat. The only time I didn't see Alyssa eat was after she had been scolded for eating.

Speaker 2 So if she got onto enough, then she would leave stuff alone or ask to get it and get told no.

Speaker 2 But that day she had had a bruise underneath one of her eyes. And I asked Brittany, I was like, what happened to her? And she told me she hit her.

Speaker 1 And what did Brittany say about why she hit her?

Speaker 2 She was being a brat.

Speaker 1 And Alyssa was really little, right? She's two, maybe.

Speaker 3 Under two.

Speaker 3 Under two.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So what was it like for you to make that call to CPS? That's obviously not a call that anybody wants to make.

Speaker 2 I didn't have a problem making it, definitely since she had, and she came out and confessed that she had hit her kid. So I didn't have a problem making it.

Speaker 2 It was the subsequent calls that I made from other phone calls that I would have with her and the non-follow-up from CPS.

Speaker 2 After, because that first call that I made I did leave all my information and Brittany found out that I'm the one that called because they told her.

Speaker 1 I want to point out here that CPS is not supposed to do this.

Speaker 1 They are not supposed to reveal who reported someone to that person and the reason they're not supposed to do that is well illustrated by what happened between Brittany and Heather after this call.

Speaker 2 So it totally changed. the dynamic that we had where I was like, I'm sorry, I had to.
And she still called me though, but there wasn't that openness anymore.

Speaker 2 And anytime she did get visited, because apparently I wasn't the only one calling CPS. And every time she did get a visit, she would call me and blame me for it.

Speaker 2 And I'd just kind of sit there and I'd be like, I'm not the one that called, sorry.

Speaker 1 So she would sort of call and berate you after that for.

Speaker 2 But she would also still call with medical questions or medical problems.

Speaker 1 At this point, like, why did you continue to have contact with her? Were you

Speaker 1 going to kind of keep an eye on the situation because of a list of people?

Speaker 2 I felt like I was the only person that might be able to do anything. And that's, I guess, shortly, I don't remember how long it took for me to get the call from Mike Weber.

Speaker 3 Heather explained to me the incident that led up to the slap mark. She had invited Brittany over for a play date, and Brittany showed up with Alyssa.

Speaker 3 Alyssa had a big bruise on the left side of her face. And Heather asked her what happened, and Brittany tells Heather, well, I just got frustrated and slapped her.
And at this time, Alyssa's two.

Speaker 3 And Heather said, you know, there was a party. I had a camera.

Speaker 3 So while I was taking pictures of the party, I took some crime scene photographs also of Alyssa's face, and I reported to CPS the next day. Thankfully, Heather still had those pictures.

Speaker 3 Again, I felt this is great, what we call extraneous evidence, extraneous offense evidence. This is extremely important to me.
Now we actually have physical abuse, something a jury can understand.

Speaker 3 So I definitely wanted to talk to her. So I gave her a call and she told me about the incident where Brittany came to her house.
She'd become friends with Brittany on online group, whattoexpect.com.

Speaker 3 And that is a group for online mothers to communicate. And they were part of a group, May of 08 babies.

Speaker 3 And Heather proceeded to tell me how Brittany would post non-stop about the health of Alyssa and that whenever someone's child was sick, Alyssa was always sicker by Brittany's words on that site.

Speaker 2 If I would post online that I had a child that had something happen, or if somebody else would post online if their child, you know, ended up in the hospital or needed stitches or something, then Alyssa would have something that happened worse.

Speaker 2 She would be sick pretty soon after, and then she would take up the feed on what to expect with her daughter's illnesses.

Speaker 1 It sounds to me like you're almost describing like a one-upsmanship.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 And that's what it started to feel like.

Speaker 3 So anyway, Heather tells me all these posts that Brittany's making. So of course, I immediately subpoenaed the whattoexpect.com records and I get all of those records.

Speaker 3 But Heather also told me about other people on that site who'd also had concerns about Brittany, specifically Lauren Mock, who I talked with.

Speaker 3 Of course, I call Lauren shortly after I talked to Heather.

Speaker 1 Lauren Mock was another member of this What to Expect When You're Expecting mom's group that had migrated to Facebook and then migrated to real-life friendships.

Speaker 1 As Mike Mike got into his investigation, he got very focused on the G-tube.

Speaker 1 So this is a tube that had been surgically implanted in Alyssa to help with her supposed feeding issues and to help her gain weight.

Speaker 1 But there was growing evidence from really every single person in Alyssa's life that she did not need this feeding tube and that the problem was that Brittany was starving her.

Speaker 1 If you listen to season one, you will notice that these feeding tubes come up a lot in these stories.

Speaker 1 And I just want to point out that as with everything else that becomes kind of a pattern, you know, last season we also talked about how many, many babies in these cases are preemies.

Speaker 1 There are these patterns in cases of medical child abuse.

Speaker 1 However, I always want to reiterate that there are many children who have these legitimate issues and that we should never look upon a mother who has a child who was born premature or a child who has a feeding tube with any extra amount of suspicion.

Speaker 1 It is not a causal relationship. At this point, Brittany was being investigated simultaneously by CPS and the police.

Speaker 1 So CPS's role in a case like this is to determine whether or not a child is safe in their home. For Mike, he is tasked with determining whether or not an offender has actually broken a law.

Speaker 1 So this is why he became so focused on the feeding tube. This is something that he can put under injury to a child because this has caused a child pain unnecessarily.

Speaker 3 Again, I'm focusing at this point on the feeding tube. And at this point, Lauren tells me that right before the feeding tube was placed, Lauren babysat Alyssa for Brittany.

Speaker 3 And Brittany had left her what's called a Gerber graduate, like a meal, I guess, for smaller kids. And Brittany had told Lauren, she probably won't eat this.

Speaker 3 Well, Lauren fed her that night, and she ate like 90% of it, which was, according to Lauren, very good for a child her age and size at that point in time, and had no issues doing it.

Speaker 3 This becomes important later because I compared the medical records to this timeframe.

Speaker 3 And sure enough, right before the feeding tube was placed, which is what I'm focused on at this point, Brittany gives a history to the medical professionals at the Dallas Children's GI Clinic that the victim eats Scerbergraduates for lunch.

Speaker 3 So I knew that what Lauren Mock was telling me was true.

Speaker 3 Lauren Mock also had a very disturbing story to tell about a time when Brittany called her and wanted Lauren Mock to go with Brittany to the hospital with Alyssa.

Speaker 3 Lauren Mock lives in northern Fort Worth. Brittany Phillips lives in southern Fort Worth.
Cook's Children's is in central Fort Worth.

Speaker 3 So Brittany Phillips wanted Lauren Mock to go with her and wanted to come get Lauren Mock and take Alyssa to Cook's Children's because Alyssa had cut herself.

Speaker 1 About how long would that take her to drive to Lauren's house?

Speaker 3 To Lauren's house, about 30 minutes, and then 30 minutes back up to Cook's Children's.

Speaker 1 And what about if Brittany had driven straight to Cook's?

Speaker 3 About 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 She wanted to go a significant distance out of her way to get her friend to bring her with her to the hospital.

Speaker 2 Correct.

Speaker 3 For what purpose other than attention? I don't know. When she got to Lauren's house, Lauren's like, it was a little cut on the finger.
She's like, put a band-aid on it. She's fine.

Speaker 3 Brittany insisted on going to the children's hospital, to Cook's Children's. They go to the emergency room, and what really disturbed Lauren is while they were waiting, the cut stopped bleeding.

Speaker 3 And Lauren observed Brittany grab Alyssa's finger and start milking the finger in order to make the cut start bleeding again. And that was very disturbing to Lauren.
And again, good evidence for me.

Speaker 1 She brought her in for this minor cut. in this very clear, sort of deliberate way, trying to make it look more serious than it was.
What was the doctor's reaction when they came in?

Speaker 3 They put a bandaid on it. Like an actual, just like, there's a band-aid, like the one you keep in the cabinet.
Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 What was Lauren's take on Brittany's behavior when you spoke to her about this?

Speaker 3 It was disturbing, but again, she didn't know what it was, right? I mean, she knew this is really weird,

Speaker 3 but she had no idea what to call it.

Speaker 1 Sounds like a lot of people had sort of a concern that they couldn't quite nail down.

Speaker 3 And then once she was being investigated and they're getting these calls from you, they sort of have something to fit this all into right and most people don't know what this is they don't know what to call it they're unfamiliar with the abuse pattern and you know just societally it's a pretty big step to accuse someone of abuse when you know what that abuse is I mean think about if you don't really know what it is it's something just some weird behavior like this I mean what do you call it I mean you kind of sound crazy reporting it right

Speaker 1 Given the fact that every single person in Brittany's life seemed to think that something was wrong between her and Alyssa, it seems like it should have been easier to protect her.

Speaker 1 But CPS has its processes and they have to be followed. These investigations, especially in medical child abuse cases, are really complicated and everything has to be meticulously documented.

Speaker 1 Because CPS plays such a big role in this story, I wanted to get some insights on how this organization actually works.

Speaker 1 So I spoke to Susan Ryle, who is the supervisor on this case, and she explained how these investigations work in her state.

Speaker 4 In Texas, there's a statewide intake main number, 1-800 number, and there's also an email address.

Speaker 4 So someone that has concerns about abuse or neglect of a child can either call the 1-800 number or send an email with a template and they fill out all the information. It's on the DFPS website.

Speaker 4 So that goes to kind of a statewide intake, kind of a clearinghouse. They either take the call and enter the information or they review the emails.
They typically staff it with their supervisor.

Speaker 4 Yes, this is legit. They assign it allegations, neglectful

Speaker 4 supervision, physical abuse, sexual abuse, abandonment, refusal to accept parental responsibility, physical neglect.

Speaker 4 And then they type it up and they send it out via email to whatever location around the state of Texas it needs to be assigned to.

Speaker 4 In Tarrant County and some of the other larger counties it goes to a central router. It's a person and that person assigns it where it needs to go.

Speaker 4 It instigates an investigation. It goes to the supervisor.
Supervisor assigns it to one of their investigators and the clock starts ticking. Actually, the clock starts ticking when it comes in.

Speaker 4 They have so many hours, 24 hours if it's a priority one, which is generally child is in immediate danger kind of thing. A priority two, they have 72 hours.

Speaker 4 So within that time frame, they lay eyes on and assess the immediate safety of the victim or victims and commence the steps taken to do an investigation, interview any other children in the home that are not victims and interview parents, alleged perpetrators, anyone else living in the home, and collaterals, professional or just friends.

Speaker 4 There's staffing going on all the time with the supervisor. If need be, it's taken up a notch, depending on the allegations and the situation.

Speaker 4 And at the end of typically 30 days is the length that can be extended, they have to rule on a disposition, whether it's ruled out.

Speaker 4 and nothing further is going to happen, unable to determine either they don't have enough or there's enough and they might want to do some more work turn it over to the family-based safety services which are the people that work with the families while the children are still in the home or reason to believe which means there's a preponderance of the evidence that the abuse or neglect has occurred and then decide whether it's the child's in a safe enough place to close it they want to open it to where cps is still involved in the home but with the children still in the home sometimes they'll place a child with a relative or friend but not take legal custody of the child or if they need to do an actual court-approved removal of the child if the child is not safe in the home and there's no appropriate outside of the home caregivers that are friends or relatives and it sounds sometimes it sounds a little nebulous and because it doesn't have to be beyond a reasonable doubt it doesn't have to be cut and dried so sometimes it's just say somebody made an allegation or a witness says I saw this happen and the child is old enough to say it didn't happen which which kids do all the time.

Speaker 4 It didn't happen. No one touched me.
No one hit me.

Speaker 4 So the child is not making an outcry, which we depend on a lot, but the child's not making an outcry, but we've got a kind of a credible witness, or maybe there was some physical findings at some point in the past.

Speaker 4 And so we kind of think maybe something happened. And we're not willing to rule it out and close it away, where it could be expunged forever from the system.

Speaker 4 So we're going to make it unable to determine. But, regardless of what we disposition, it really needs to be documented really well.
We need to explain our reasons.

Speaker 1 I think it's really important to understand as we talk about CPS that, you know, this is an organization that looms really large in the public imagination and sort of in the fears of parents.

Speaker 1 But in reality, these are mostly really young, mostly female, overworked, under-resourced workers, and there's a very high burnout rate.

Speaker 1 And medical child abuse cases are extremely complicated and they do not receive any specific training on them.

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Speaker 1 I want to go back to Heather Harris. So even after Brittany knew that Heather had called CPS on her, she still called her every time she was having a crisis.

Speaker 1 It sounds like she maybe had an interpretation of your relationship that you guys were closer.

Speaker 2 I'm someone where if you call, I'm going to answer the phone. I think I'm the one that answered the phone.

Speaker 2 And because I know that there were a couple other people in the group that they didn't get a good vibe from her, so they just stopped. They were done.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I'm going to try to help where I can. So I think I'm the one that just kept answering the phone.
We were not close. If Alyssa ended up in the hospital, she would call.

Speaker 2 And the phone calls weren't necessarily about Alyssa.

Speaker 2 They were about her, how she had to deal with it and she didn't want to have to do this and how it was impacting her and how she didn't have support. There wasn't a lot of talk about her daughter.

Speaker 2 It's, oh, my daughter's in the hospital and now it's me, me, me type of aspect of it, which seemed a little bit alarming.

Speaker 2 I know there was one time when Alyssa was in the hospital and Brittany had called me. She was there for multiple days.

Speaker 2 And every time that they tried to discharge her, and at this point, I didn't know what to believe, but she said every time they tried to discharge her, her blood sugar would drop.

Speaker 1 Brady at this time was living with her mother, Kathleen, who was an older woman who was in very bad health.

Speaker 2 And I remembered that her mother was diabetic. So I wondered if she had access to insulin.
She had told me she was a CNA, that she had some medical background. So I started

Speaker 2 a certified nurse assistant. So it kind of made me wonder if she had access to stuff.
So I ended up calling the hospital at one point and letting them know.

Speaker 2 And that's how I found out that she had had multiple hospital stays at multiple hospitals in the area. She had seen multiple doctors all over the Metroplex.
Like it really got weird at that point.

Speaker 2 My mother ended up hospitalized at one point and her mother died not too long after. And she called me.
while she was giving a CPR on her mother, while the ambulance was there.

Speaker 2 And that set off because I didn't didn't really know her. It was really odd that all of the stuff that was happening, she was calling me for.

Speaker 2 And that's when my husband started to point out, like, I think you're giving her the attention she wants.

Speaker 1 Heather didn't even really consider Brittany a friend at this point. So she was somewhat shocked to get a call from her in the middle of what appeared to be a major crisis.

Speaker 2 It was in the evening and it was late because I was in bed with my husband and she called frantic and she said that she, her mother was dying.

Speaker 2 She was given CPR, that the ambulance was on the the way, and she needed help. And the only thing I could think of is she's going to need help with her daughter.
So I offered to go pick her up.

Speaker 2 And it was pretty late because my husband's like, please don't leave. It's too late.
And I was like, if she needs help, Alyssa can come stay here. And she refused.

Speaker 2 She wanted to keep Alyssa with her the whole time. And you could hear her in the background screaming.
And she went to the hospital with her. And it was definitely odd.

Speaker 2 And I mean, to me, not natural because if something was happening to my mother, I wouldn't be picking up the phone to call somebody I barely knew.

Speaker 1 What is your interpretation of why Brittany called you?

Speaker 2 She got the attention that she needed at that point because I stayed on the phone with her for probably well over an hour or two. And I just pretty much just let her talk.

Speaker 2 At that point, that's when she told me that her brothers didn't like her and she was afraid that they were going to blame her for her mother's death. There was that.

Speaker 1 And during this conversation, Brittany says, if she dies, my brothers are going to blame me. Yes.
You hate to judge anybody and what they say in a moment of crisis, but

Speaker 1 that's striking. I want to highlight this moment where Brittany mentions that she's worried her brothers are going to think she was responsible for her mother's death.

Speaker 1 I want to be sure to say that we do not have any hard evidence that Brittany was involved in her mother's death.

Speaker 1 However, numerous people reported to Detective Mike that they found this death and its timing extremely suspicious. Meanwhile, the CPS file on Brittany was ballooning.

Speaker 1 Susan Ryle catches us up on where this investigation stood.

Speaker 4 A year previously, she'd had a case.

Speaker 4 But the case came in with humongous concerns, concerns from multiple medical staff, multiple hospitals. When it came to you.
When it came to, when it was called in to CPS.

Speaker 4 Obvious concerns. Medical staff, physicians, hospital staff, they knew knew what was going on.
This was I'm assuming during that hospitalization.

Speaker 4 Yes, she was hospitalized at Cooks, and I don't know how long she'd been there.

Speaker 1 This was the August 2011 hospitalization where Alyssa ended up being removed from Brittany's custody.

Speaker 4 They didn't have all her medical records together, but they already knew she'd been seeing all these doctors about all these concerns. Her stories were inconsistent.

Speaker 4 What she said did not always match either what medical records showed or what was actually witnessed by staff.

Speaker 1 Can you think of any examples of that?

Speaker 4 Well, the eating mostly, and that's something that was talked about everyone that ever met the woman.

Speaker 4 Brittany would tell people she can't eat or she's allergic to chocolate soy and milk, and she can't eat this. And if she, if Alyssa eats, she'll get sick, she'll vomit, she can't swallow.

Speaker 4 Brittany talked all the time about her swallow problems, and she doesn't eat.

Speaker 4 And then people would people friends hospital employees would witness her withholding food from alyssa and then when questioned she said oh that'll make her sick or she doesn't feel good or she's allergic to that but i mean the main concerns was they knew she was withholding food they knew brittany wasn't following instructions brittany was not cooperative She was argumentative, not compliant all the time, same as she was with all medical staff she worked with.

Speaker 4 But Alyssa improved and then again regressed when she was sent home. And this was just had been going on too long and was too obvious.

Speaker 1 And Alyssa at this time is three. And she's very small for her age.

Speaker 4 She's incredibly small. Brittany says she can't walk and she has braces for her legs.
The hospital had moved her into a room with a camera.

Speaker 4 And one of the first things she said was, is this the room with the camera?

Speaker 4 Which kind of raised red flags. I mean, why would you even say anything about that? Once she was placed in the room with the camera, blood works better.

Speaker 4 And sometimes they would observe her talking to Alyssa, but of course there's no audio, so they didn't know what she was saying. So

Speaker 4 that was their concern. Medical staff was ready to write affidavits so that we could take it to court.

Speaker 1 You sort of walked us through this process before.

Speaker 3 For there to be an immediate removal,

Speaker 1 there has to be a real fear of imminent danger to that child. Otherwise, you have to do do the whole month-long investigation, right?

Speaker 4 So by this time we had established, we being the DA's office, Detective Weber,

Speaker 4 the higher-ups, mainly the higher-ups in CPS, had established kind of a protocol, so to speak. And one part of that protocol was

Speaker 4 medical abuse, Munchausen cases. And one of the things that we were able to discuss was, I mentioned earlier, that a priority one case, we have 24 hours to see the child and begin the investigation.

Speaker 4 A priority two case, we have 72 hours to see the child. It was determined in our multidisciplinary team and the higher ups, my boss, my program director, her boss, that we would look at these things.

Speaker 4 We could get approval from our higher ups to not see within the 24 or 72 hours. if it would have damaged the case.

Speaker 4 If we go to these mothers and say, bam, here's our case, they could take the child and run.

Speaker 1 As we've discussed numerous times on this show, it's never one thing in these cases.

Speaker 1 It's really a pattern of not only illnesses and issues in a child, but of deception around those illnesses that someone like Detective Mike is looking for.

Speaker 1 So we talked to Mike Weber about how complicated it is to build one of these cases. Brittany is pushing the story that Alyssa is sick.
She's doing it by saying it on Facebook.

Speaker 1 She's doing it by giving Alyssa a picture of herself in leg braces she didn't need.

Speaker 1 She's doing it by telling friends and family on every possible occasion the litany of things that are wrong with Alyssa's health.

Speaker 1 So it's important for people to understand, I think, that it is putting all those pieces together. It's not a smoking gun, if you will.
It's not you're going to find one thing. It's a pattern.

Speaker 3 Correct. These are always circumstantial cases.
And the way you build a circumstantial case is by getting every piece of the puzzle. This is a 20,000-piece puzzle.
There's so many aspects to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think actually kind of what you're speaking to, it's the legwork, right?

Speaker 1 It's just the unbelievable amount of work to go through thousands of pages of medical records, thousands of pages of internet posts.

Speaker 1 If you think about what someone who's online a lot, what their internet history would look like. Yeah.
It's a lot to look through.

Speaker 3 These offenders rely on that. They rely on the medical profession being too busy.
They rely on CPS being too busy. They rely on law enforcement being too busy to dedicate the work to do this.

Speaker 3 I mean, they really do. And 95% of the time, they're right.

Speaker 1 At this point, even though it seemed like everyone in Britney's life, including medical professionals, felt certain abuse was happening, that Brittany was starving her child, this was by no means a slam dunk on Mike's part.

Speaker 1 Things were about to take a huge turn.

Speaker 3 In my 37, almost 38 years as a police officer, I've never come across this. I doubt that very many police officers ever have.
Very many detectives ever have, regardless of their experience level.

Speaker 1 Even for

Speaker 3 a seasoned child abuse detective.

Speaker 1 That's next time on Nobody Should Believe Me.

Speaker 1 Nobody Should Believe Me is produced by Large Media. Our music is by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Schupak.
Special thanks to our lead producer, Tina Knoll, and our editor, Travis Clark.