S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On

Speaker 1 True Story Media

Speaker 1 Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse, and this content may be difficult for some listeners.

Speaker 1 If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchhousensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.

Speaker 1 On New Year's Eve, 2009, three years to the day when my sister dramatically lost the twin pregnancy that never was, my very real nephew arrived significantly ahead of schedule.

Speaker 1 Premature births are a nearly ubiquitous detail in these cases, and as in other cases I've seen, this birth was followed by a cascade of problems around his eating and his development.

Speaker 1 For months, my parents and I had this terrible feeling that something was off, but I remember it being so hard to nail down.

Speaker 1 Megan is very smart, and she was a nurse for some period of time, so she would explain everything about my nephew's health in a way that would be extremely hard to question.

Speaker 1 And her version of things was usually the only version we had because she rarely let anyone else go to the doctor with her.

Speaker 1 And then, for reasons I will never know, she finally did let my mother go to one of my nephew's gastroenterologists' appointments with her.

Speaker 1 And it was during this appointment that a thread came loose that ended up unraveling the whole thing.

Speaker 1 At this point, my nephew was still in the first year of his life, and he'd been diagnosed as failure to thrive, meaning that he wasn't gaining weight as he should have been.

Speaker 1 And because of this, he had a nasal gastric feeding tube, i.e., a feeding tube that went in through his nose.

Speaker 1 Megan had been telling us that her son was going to need a surgically implanted G-tube, but during this appointment, my mom was sitting in the room when the doctor told Megan the opposite, that they should give my nephew more time with a less invasive tube.

Speaker 1 They wanted to be judicious, for obvious reasons, about rushing an infant into a surgical procedure.

Speaker 1 The next day, Megan gave me an update on his health. During this time, this was nearly the only thing we talked about.

Speaker 1 And she told me that, unfortunately, it looked like he was going to need the G-tube surgery.

Speaker 1 I remember this moment so vividly that I can still picture exactly where I was, driving on the wooded road by the lake that my parents live on. I can still feel the bottom dropping out of my stomach.

Speaker 1 For once, it was there in black and white. Megan was lying, and the consequences this time were too scary to ignore.

Speaker 1 And truthfully, this feeling of wrong-footedness is still with me, part of the debris of this disaster. I don't want to give you the wrong idea about the state of my life or my mental health.

Speaker 1 My life is really good. It's also true that this stuff with my sister, I'm not over it.
You don't get over it. When you find yourself caught up in something like this, you're just never the same.

Speaker 1 People believe their eyes. That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.

Speaker 1 If we didn't, you could never make it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me.

Speaker 1 Hello, I have exciting news. I am officially taking this show on the road next year.
I'm going to be doing a series of Nobody Should Believe Me live shows next March.

Speaker 1 I will be in Los Angeles on March 7th at the Regent Theater. I'll be in my hometown, Seattle, at the Triple Door on March 18th.
Then I'm headed to New York City for a show at Sony Hall on March 25th.

Speaker 1 And I'll be wrapping up in Chicago on March 26th at the Den. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.
You can find a link in the show notes or on our website.

Speaker 1 We're going to have special guests, meet and greets, and more at these shows. We're going to have a great time.
So go get your tickets now. Hope to see you out there.
Hey, it's Andrea.

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Speaker 1 When we last left Sophie, she was deep into gymnastics mom mode with her older daughter M, driving hours each way for all-day training sessions, all while somehow also caring for her younger daughter C, whose health was, according to Sophie, increasingly fragile.

Speaker 1 And somehow, again, she was doing all this with no income. Sophie had also found a new church congregation to lean on, and this one was a bit of a different flavor than her hometown church haven.

Speaker 2 The way that Hollywood presents the powers of hell is like normal, ordinary people are walking down the street, see something, they shun it, and then wake up the next day demonized.

Speaker 2 That is not how that works. The enemy has zero authority in the life of a Christian.

Speaker 2 The enemy can only occupy territory in your heart, your house, your mind, or your family if you come into agreement with a lie that he says.

Speaker 1 This new church, Pursuit Northwest, would become a pillar of Sophie's support system here in Seattle.

Speaker 1 So we wanted to get some additional context about this place from our evangelical history expert, Dr. Lauren Turek.

Speaker 4 So the Pursuit Church is not explicitly Pentecostal in terms of denomination. It's not a member of the, you know, Assemblies of God or anything, but they have a lot of the language.

Speaker 4 So I think they're influenced by it. What's very interesting about Pentecostalism is that, first of all, this is something that emerges.

Speaker 4 This is a faith tradition that comes in the United States in the early 20th century. It starts as an interracial movement.
It does not stay that way.

Speaker 4 In the 20s, it splits into a black and white Pentecostal church and there's a sort of lot going on there. But it starts that way.

Speaker 4 And what's very interesting is in those really early days of Pentecostalism, many of the people who received this sort of Holy Spirit began speaking in tongues.

Speaker 4 They believed that they were actually speaking foreign languages that meant they should go out to the place that they thought had the language that they were speaking to evangelize.

Speaker 4 So they were like, I think I'm speaking Chinese. God is calling me to go to China.
And so they would go to China.

Speaker 4 They'd show up and they they would, of course, then realize that they were not speaking Chinese. But that didn't matter.
They would stay and they would evangelize there.

Speaker 4 And this is one of the reasons why Pentecostalism ended up spreading really rapidly through Africa, through Latin America, in Asia.

Speaker 4 It's one of the largest churches in the world, is a Pentecostal church in South Korea that has something like 800,000 congregants in one church, right?

Speaker 4 And some of the reason it spreads is because there's all this evangelistic work and some of it's because it's this very ecstatic emotional experience. You feel a really deep personal connection.

Speaker 4 There isn't this separation between you and the gospel.

Speaker 4 So it's really emotional. These are really emotional services.
And so I see some of that in the language that this church uses, that they use a language of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 4 They're very conservative politically, right? They are...

Speaker 4 you know, opposed to gay marriage. They're certainly anti-abortion.
They're very pro-Israel.

Speaker 4 They, again, I mentioned they have this

Speaker 4 really anti-trans. Yeah,

Speaker 4 they have this sort of statement, again, of inclusivity, but

Speaker 4 it's one that really kind of belies that longer history of kind of white evangelical racism and the split in Pentecostalism.

Speaker 1 Their lead pastor, Russell Johnson, is young with a shock of bleach blonde hair, and he wears a leather jacket and a ball cap on stage.

Speaker 1 Recently, he's been seen sporting a red cap that says, make prayer great again. So this church really makes no mystery of its political leadings.

Speaker 1 And from what we could surmise in our conversations with those who knew her, these were political values that Sophie shared.

Speaker 1 And given her evangelical background and affiliations, it would be surprising if she didn't. Pursuit is a mega church with rock concert vibes.
And Pastor Russell's sermons, they are intense.

Speaker 1 I have said it before, and I will say it again.

Speaker 6 We ain't canceling church. And we will not close our doors.
We will not stop gathering people to worship. We will not cower in fear.

Speaker 6 And we will not be intimidated by the demonic strongholds in this city.

Speaker 1 Beyond the gym that they were spending a lot of time in, this church was the one major place that Sophie and her girls found community.

Speaker 7 Yeah, we would see each other in church. And I live

Speaker 7 north up in Linwood area, and she lives in Renton. So even for the practicalities of that, we didn't spend a whole lot of time outside of a church setting to

Speaker 7 other than maybe a birthday party here or there or things like that.

Speaker 1 This is from the police interview with Cassandra Johnson, a fellow member of Pursuit Northwest.

Speaker 8 What about I have a son similar age to her so they were in children's church together and

Speaker 8 issues and that she's often

Speaker 8 in and out of the hospital and have tried to be really supportive to Sophie in that regard.

Speaker 10 At one time

Speaker 7 I kept stuck in the hospital and she needed some backup child care.

Speaker 10 But other than that, I don't know a whole lot beyond what Sophie already shares.

Speaker 11 And it looks like your church did a pretty big fundraiser for Sophie to get her, to get a new wheelchair accessible vehicle. Is that correct?

Speaker 10 Yes, and I was part of helping to promote that.

Speaker 9 I didn't do a whole lot of

Speaker 7 other than like just Facebook promotions and things like that.

Speaker 9 But I was part of making some of those connections with Sophie and and

Speaker 1 the community that i was involved in in any in any way but i know that there were other people in the church who were probably more involved on that end through the church for the fundraiser so specifically i just know that the church was involved because sophie was very active there this fundraiser for the wheelchair accessible van was one of the biggest ticket items that sophie fundraised for but members of this church remember other smaller things such as gifts for the girls and just the general sense that their hearts really went out to this family.

Speaker 1 And not to keep harping on all of Sophie's driving times, but this church is all the way up in Snohomish, which can easily be an hour's drive from where they were living during this time in Renton.

Speaker 1 Again, just never making things easy on herself.

Speaker 1 Sophie is taking her younger daughter C to the doctor a lot during this time, and she begins doctor hopping, taking C between Mary Bridge Hospital on the south end and Seattle Children's on the north side of Seattle.

Speaker 1 And then flying out to Duke in North Carolina to see their renowned specialists after C receives a clinical diagnosis of alternating hemiplegia of childhood.

Speaker 1 Sophie also claimed that C had severe mobility issues due to her HC, that she would sometimes not be able to walk because of weakness or even be completely paralyzed for hours or days at a time.

Speaker 1 It's not clear when exactly Sophie started putting C in a wheelchair and leg braces. A hospital noted their use as early as 2016 when C was just two years old.
Here is how Sophie describes it.

Speaker 11 She has a wheelchair and she has a walker. We still utilize those absolutely if she needs it.

Speaker 11 But it's not a 24-7 thing.

Speaker 1 And the leg braces were a bit of a focal point for C as one mom from their gym remembers.

Speaker 13 Because she had like braces on her legs.

Speaker 1 Always when you saw her?

Speaker 13 I'm trying to think if I remember seeing them without it. Because

Speaker 13 she would show everybody her braces and then

Speaker 13 Sophie would talk about you know where they went to get them and what they had to do to get them and the person who they had made them specially for her and

Speaker 13 because I remember she talked about how they had ponies on them

Speaker 13 pink purple ponies I think

Speaker 1 one of the gymnastics moms also remembers seeing the wheelchair having the youngest daughter with her always sometimes in a wheelchair walking around sometimes with leg braces on walking around and one of Cia's school aides who worked with her as a physical therapist via Zoom during COVID, also recounts.

Speaker 18 She had a personal wheelchair

Speaker 14 and I actually helped get them equipment.

Speaker 14 So she has a personal wheelchair and it was set up as a very dependent style,

Speaker 14 meaning it wasn't configured in a way that a student who had ability could self-propel it. Right.
So we had some adjustment made so that that could be

Speaker 14 she could self-propel.

Speaker 14 she had an adapted bike which she had outgrown

Speaker 14 and so she obtained a new bike

Speaker 18 and that was through the school

Speaker 14 the school doesn't purchase anything it's all through private insurance okay got it

Speaker 14 I sometimes have to support those purchases and I do I I many of my students are medically fragile

Speaker 14 so they have significant equipment needs so I am the one who often has to write a letter stating

Speaker 14 medical necessity of things.

Speaker 14 In the case of her equipment,

Speaker 14 excuse me, the bike was, I think, through her private funds.

Speaker 14 And she also received a gate trainer through a, like a nonprofit.

Speaker 18 And did you ever see

Speaker 18 primarily in her wheelchair when you were communicating with her?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 1 Now, it's worth noting that not everyone who uses a wheelchair or mobility aid needs it all the time. Nonetheless, these discrepancies are notable.

Speaker 1 And Sophie, in her own words, says that even the doctors doubted her.

Speaker 11 Or you have people looking at me like, I'm crazy.

Speaker 12 Like, she's fine.

Speaker 11 Like, I've had a provider be like, she doesn't need a wheelchair. She doesn't need braces.
Like, she needs to be a kid. And I'm like.

Speaker 11 Do you think she could have gotten all of those things if there weren't several individuals who are professionals in their field of orthotics and equipment that could need to see those things in order to for it to be warranted to be paid for insurance.

Speaker 11 Like, just like you have to get pre-authorization for an MRI, like you can't just go and get a $13,000 wheelchair without the specialist, all of the, like

Speaker 7 everything.

Speaker 11 You just can't.

Speaker 12 That's silly.

Speaker 11 It's not like I'm buying a wheelchair off the street and being like, hey, my kid needs a wheelchair. It's like, no, you have to have so many things in line.

Speaker 1 And sure, you would need a doctor's approval to get AIDS through insurance. But as C's PT noted, many of these items were purchased via private funds.

Speaker 14 In the case of her equipment, I think through her private funds. And she also received a gate trainer through a, like a nonprofit.

Speaker 1 As for the wheelchair, this appears to have been paid for by a local commercial painting contractor.

Speaker 1 In a video posted on the company's YouTube page, they say that they had the, quote, privilege of playing a part in C's life.

Speaker 1 We were able to donate donate the finances to acquire this amazing wheelchair, which happens to be in her favorite color. Here's Sophie in that same video.

Speaker 4 We're so thankful to Scott Coatings for their corporate sponsorship.

Speaker 7 Couldn't do it without corporate sponsors.

Speaker 1 But many of the folks who were seeing C regularly, like her neighbor, had questions about how much she actually needed this chair.

Speaker 22 You know, she has a wheelchair. She was in, they were in this church that spent, you know, 80 grand to get this wheelchair lift in the car they've never used.

Speaker 22 And the only time I've seen that kid in a wheelchair is when this film crew came and did this like

Speaker 22 documentary about her. And, you know, they were all dressed up and she's in a wheelchair.

Speaker 22 But then, you know, when they left, she's like running literally circles in the thing, you know, stuff like that, man.

Speaker 1 And just a note here, we haven't been able to confirm this 80 grand number. The figures we found were closer to 30 grand.

Speaker 1 So this all begs the question, what do we know about C's various diagnoses at this time? And what, if anything, would have required her to use a wheelchair?

Speaker 1 Now, there were some objective findings early on with C.

Speaker 1 When she was about two years old, she had an abnormal MRI that indicated possible static encephalopathy, which could be an indicator for cerebral palsy. Emphasis on could.

Speaker 1 There was never a definitive diagnosis of CP, and cerebral palsy, like many things, is a clinical diagnosis. There is no definitive test.

Speaker 1 The vast majority of the various diagnoses C received were based on Sophie's reports, which as friend of the show, Dr.

Speaker 1 Becks, a pediatric hospitalist and MBP expert, explains is almost always the case.

Speaker 12 A clinical diagnosis is a diagnosis that relies on the story and the symptoms that are being described more than anything I can do a specific test for or a physician can do a specific test for.

Speaker 12 So often there is no lab diagnosis, MRI diagnosis. It is ruling out other things sometimes and then being left with the story and the symptoms fitting the condition.

Speaker 12 The problem is in medicine, there are a lot of diagnoses that we don't have that one perfect test for.

Speaker 12 And I think I was just talking to my friend this week about how in pediatrics, I think it's even a little bit different because we're not relying on what the patient is telling us.

Speaker 12 In some cases, we're relying on what the parent is telling us.

Speaker 12 And pediatricians in general are trustworthy people who is taught and is trained to listen to the parent or listen to the story and try to come up with a diagnosis.

Speaker 1 As for C's wheelchair, leg braces, and gait trainers, we have more definitive information about whether those were necessary.

Speaker 1 A letter from Seattle Children's to the Department of Children and Families says this about a June 20th, 2019 visit to children's where C arrived in a wheelchair.

Speaker 1 Hartman was told that CH needed absolutely no braces, orthotics, wheelchairs, etc.

Speaker 1 According to the records, after the examination, Hartman was told that CH actually needed normal activity and play in order to develop appropriate muscle strength and physical development.

Speaker 1 Use of mobility-limiting devices like orthotics and wheelchairs can delay development in children, making them dependent on care providers.

Speaker 1 Nonetheless, on June 24th, 2019, Hartman brought CH in with leg braces on and in a wheelchair.

Speaker 1 There are many instances of C being seen in a wheelchair after this date, including during a professional photo shoot she did with her equine therapy team.

Speaker 1 Wheelchairs of dubious necessity are a hallmark of these cases. Maya Kowalski, Justina Pelletier, and perhaps most famously, Gypsy Rose Blanchard all had wheelchairs that they did not need.

Speaker 1 It's a dramatic prop. A child in a wheelchair is something that immediately elicits concern and sympathy.
In nearly all of the fundraising videos and images, C is in a wheelchair.

Speaker 1 But then, when they were off camera, it was a completely different story, as their next-door neighbor reports here.

Speaker 21 We've never actually seen her using the wheelchair.

Speaker 21 We saw her once being pushed around with a photographer in the closest act taking pictures of her in it, but she we've never seen her use it, never, ever, any other time, which was we were, she got the wheelchair car, the whole go fund me thing, and asking for money to pay for it, needed the church to pay for it.

Speaker 21 And we were like, well, we've never seen her in it. I don't, maybe they use it when they're out, if they go out.
I don't know. We've never seen her in it though.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Did Sophie say anything about needing for a wheelchair at all to you?

Speaker 21 Something about

Speaker 21 if like she's not in a maybe she can't walk from an episode but she's not totally paralyzed they use it or something. Okay.

Speaker 21 But no, I don't I've never I don't remember anything specific about her why she needed it

Speaker 1 The charade of an unnecessary wheelchair isn't just about having useful props for attention seeking and fundraising.

Speaker 1 It's also a piece of the deep and relentless psychological abuse endemic to these cases.

Speaker 1 These props function as a reminder to the child that they are sick, that they are different, that the activities of their peers are out of reach for them.

Speaker 1 They are reminders of who is in control of the story. And in Sophie's case, these props were just one small piece of the dire story she was weaving for her youngest daughter.

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Speaker 1 In a continuation of her early blogging efforts, Sophie was very active on social media during this time.

Speaker 1 And as with many parents, she took to Instagram in the mid-2010s, where she kept prolific accounts on her own social media profile, as well as one dedicated to see.

Speaker 1 I know that many parents do this sort of thing in a much more benign way, but I would like to go on the record and say: please don't. Don't make family accounts chronicling your child's every move.

Speaker 1 Don't start writing in their voice. And please, don't put pictures of your children in vulnerable medical situations on the internet.
Just don't.

Speaker 1 During this time, Sophie was posting constantly about C's issues, much of it in the name of, quote, raising awareness about C's rare neurological condition.

Speaker 1 But she also included numerous photos of C's feeding tube and talked about it quite a bit.

Speaker 1 According to Sophie, this intervention was recommended by Marybridge Hospital, which is located in Tacoma, just south of where Sophie was living at the time.

Speaker 11 We need to start with genetic testing and we need to start with a gastric scan to see how fast contents are moving in her stomach.

Speaker 11 So they did those two things.

Speaker 11 The gastric stand came back that like a normal stomach is supposed to empty within like 90 minutes and after four hours

Speaker 11 so it showed a delayed gastric empty which would explain that like

Speaker 11 Food even after 30 minutes of sitting in your high chair is not moving out of her stomach So she's throwing up so it made perfect sense. We were like okay great.

Speaker 11 So then

Speaker 11 the gastric provider was like, we, this is pretty darn bad. We need to talk about kind of intervention.

Speaker 11 Yeah, like, what did they say about how bad it was? Because that sounds awful to me.

Speaker 11 He just said, I think his word was, this is, like, he called me on the phone to tell me, and he just said, this is a pretty marked

Speaker 11 finding. Okay.

Speaker 25 So, quick question.

Speaker 25 So, when you were, and she's not emptying her bowels right right there's a delay in that yeah is

Speaker 25 when that's happening what is she in pain or what what is her physical reaction when her vowels are not emptying and on that timeline rough type thing so her bowels is another story but her stomach yes she definitely um

Speaker 11 has had times where so

Speaker 11 Further testing indicated that she needed a sakostomy tube. So her delay is all the way way down her gut and not just her stomach.
Right, because the gastric emptying is like more like

Speaker 11 getting everything out of your stomach into your intestines. Into your intestines.
So then we figured that out and great, let's help get movement. We got a G-tube.

Speaker 11 But then if your lower bowel is not moving, then that's going to cause problems because you're getting stuff to go down. So she ended up getting a sakostomy tube as well.

Speaker 11 And that flushes out her bowel.

Speaker 1 These interventions that Sophie is describing are not inconsequential. Both involve surgeries and carry a risk of infection.

Speaker 1 The G2 procedure in particular is ubiquitous in medical child abuse cases, and it's especially terrifying in this context because it gives a perpetrator direct access to introduced medications and other substances, as we saw in the Britney Phillips case in season two, where she poisoned her daughter.

Speaker 1 And once again, Sophie's consistent reports to doctors and others about C's ability to eat or keep down food did not match up with what others observed. Here's Sophie's mother, Anne.

Speaker 14 Have I seen her eat? Yeah.

Speaker 28 Sandwiches, apples.

Speaker 17 Okay. Just regular food.

Speaker 20 Veggies, regular food, yep.

Speaker 14 Okay, okay.

Speaker 18 Have you ever seen her not able to eat or throwing up?

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 28 Okay. I've never seen her throwing up, but I have seen her not being able to eat.
And so then she's, you know, Sophie will

Speaker 20 put her feeding tube connective.

Speaker 20 I've seen her walk around with that on her little backpack.

Speaker 14 Okay, that's gonna be hard to see.

Speaker 20 So swallowing can be hard for her too.

Speaker 1 Sophie's reports to the doctors about C's food issues are prolific, and she pushes hard for escalating interventions during this time, from the G tube to the more invasive GJ tube that C had for a time.

Speaker 1 But again, others observed a different relationship between C and food. Here is Sophie's father, Art, reflecting on his time with his granddaughter.

Speaker 19 Have you ever seen her,

Speaker 17 you know, like throwing up or unable to eat or any of those types of behaviors?

Speaker 17 Um I've not I've not seen her throwing up. Um

Speaker 17 uh not

Speaker 17 w you know one thing that I will say is that you know she

Speaker 29 her her whole stomach and digestive system doesn't really work very well.

Speaker 17 So she actually has to be treated with a sarcastomy every single night. No, well, the only thing I'd say about food is in in in fact

Speaker 17 um

Speaker 17 the opposite is true.

Speaker 17 Would eat as much as we'd feed her, but given the fact that her digestive system is so messed up, my daughter has to regulate that because

Speaker 29 she would cause herself serious health issues.

Speaker 17 Okay, just like

Speaker 19 a kid in a candy yard, eat too much.

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah, she she would she would eat as much as you give her.

Speaker 17 My daughter we actually have to regulate how much she eats because of her digestive stomach stomach issues gotcha gotcha and then she can't rid she cannot rid her food and that's why she has to have a g tube and an s tube and then has to sit on the toilet for an hour every single night

Speaker 1 um and yeah so it's it's a it's a complicated situation during this period c was spending a lot of time at hippotherapy that is physical therapy with horses not hippos and she appeared to be thriving so much there that there was talk of her pursuing dressage this is the ancient sport sport of fancy horse dancing.

Speaker 1 And if you are thinking, wow, that sounds like an extremely expensive hobby, you are correct. Anyway, here is one of C's hippotherapy providers.

Speaker 27 Talks about food all the time.

Speaker 30 Yeah, it's one of her favorite subjects.

Speaker 27 She's like, oh, we're going to go and get donuts after this. Or we're going to go to

Speaker 30 like, they used to have therapy and then have a

Speaker 30 gap and then have adaptive and they used to like go and get a snack in between because I'd always ask them, like, where did you go for your snack today? And they quite often would go to Starbucks.

Speaker 27 I went to Starbucks. And I had whatever.

Speaker 1 And this is another member of Sophie's church on a call with a detective. And just a note that she is with her child in this phone call, so you will hear a baby in the background.

Speaker 3 Relatable.

Speaker 31 She, like, fixates on food, so Sophie has to keep her, like, you know, diet very in check because she can choke.

Speaker 31 And she's had the J tube, the stomach stuff, you know, because part of the disorder is digestive stuff. And so

Speaker 31 before they figured that out, she would puke like instantly after eating. Every time she would bend down, everything would just come out.
But yeah,

Speaker 31 she loves food.

Speaker 18 And so when you were around her, after she had the tube placed, was that how she primarily got her food in your experience?

Speaker 31 No, she would still eat by mouth on what she was in episode.

Speaker 1 These reports are haunting because they echo what we've heard from the family of Alyssa Weyburn in season two.

Speaker 1 And this detail about a child being able to eat normally and somehow still supposedly needing a G-tube, again, it's ubiquitous in the research about medical child abuse and unfortunately deeply familiar from the two investigations into my sister Megan.

Speaker 1 As I said at the top of this episode, it was Megan's push for this very intervention that brought the whole thing crashing down for my family.

Speaker 1 As far as we know, she never did end up getting a G-Tube place for my nephew, but it wasn't long after everything blew up with my family that Megan got pregnant again. That baby didn't make it.

Speaker 1 And not seven months later, she had my niece, who would go on to get a G-Tube.

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Speaker 1 To help us get some more context around G-tubes and normal eating behaviors, we spoke to Dr. Jill Glick, an experienced child abuse pediatrician from the University of Chicago.

Speaker 1 Is there any medical scenario where like you could have a child that is like going to the neighbor's house and eating pizza, but they still need a G-tube?

Speaker 1 And like that's like that all these people are observing this child eating normally?

Speaker 3 The question is if they're eating and they're doing okay is the difference because there are kids who are not supposed to be taking oral or whatever and they'll get in trouble, right?

Speaker 3 But if you're having a kid who's eating p I just hypothetically have a kid who's eating pizza doing fine or eating all this stuff and doing fine, you have to beg the question of why you have a G-tube.

Speaker 1 Right. So I mean that and that is the scenario that we're looking at where it's like people are observing the kid, yeah, not cheating on their doing.

Speaker 1 And so the parent is saying, oh, they shouldn't be doing that. But then like, or sometimes they're saying it's fine.
And then like,

Speaker 3 but most parents will say, hey, that's great.

Speaker 3 Right. Let's get this kid off this G-tube.

Speaker 1 Rather than escalating for an even more severe intervention.

Speaker 3 Most parents don't want a G-tube. And in fact, I've been involved with lots of ex-preemies

Speaker 3 where they needed a G-tube for growth and development and the parents so wanted them to eat from a bottle.

Speaker 3 You know, and they were begging, can we do anything but the G-tube? I want my kid to be normal and well. So that's my experience.
And so, no, it doesn't make doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 And I mean, there's going to be conditions where you're, like I said, you're going to be doing some oral, some G-tube, but there's usually it's transitional usually, unless, like I said, this someone had a horrible esophageal cancer and they had to do some reconstruction.

Speaker 3 And it's like, you can take some from up where you had cancer in your neck. You can take some from up, but you'll choke a little bit, but we have to make sure you get enough by G2.

Speaker 7 But that's not the case.

Speaker 3 No, no. If you're eating pizza and pepperoni and all that stuff, it's probably not.

Speaker 1 This is where people looking at these cases, unfortunately, and perhaps especially the judges tasked with making the calls, get stopped up.

Speaker 1 If a child didn't need this surgery, why on earth would the doctors do it? And the answer turns out to be pretty straightforward, because the parent wasn't telling the truth.

Speaker 1 Sophie consistently pushes for these interventions by reporting constant severe vomiting, vomiting up blood, inability to drink water without aspirating, and C choking on her food.

Speaker 1 And on several occasions, she brings C to the ER, claiming that she's dehydrated because of this alleged chronic vomiting, only to have C's clinical exam show that in fact, she's just fine.

Speaker 1 This is also when Sophie begins her pattern of doctor shopping, as well as false and exaggerated reports.

Speaker 1 For example, in 2016, when C was just over two years old, she underwent three separate swallow studies to determine how well she was able to tolerate eating by mouth.

Speaker 1 The first test came back normal, though Sophie swiftly reported to the next doctor that the study came back abnormal.

Speaker 1 The second of the three tests came back with mild findings, but a G-tube was never recommended. They simply suggested adding some thickener to C's liquids as a precaution.

Speaker 1 Sophie, however, however, reported that this study showed severe issues with swallowing. A third swallow study, two months later, came back once again normal, no issues.

Speaker 1 But Sophie argues with this, saying that C is simply able to, quote, perform the ability to swallow when she's in a hospital setting.

Speaker 1 And if you don't think that that sounds medically plausible, you're correct. It's not.
And a lot of this false reporting is happening from one provider to the next.

Speaker 1 So you may be asking, why didn't these hospitals just get all the records from each other? Well, they can't do that without a parent's permission.

Speaker 1 And it's via this pattern of lies and exaggerations that Sophie eventually succeeds in getting a G-tube placed on July 10th, 2017, less than two weeks after receiving a provisional diagnosis of alternating hemiplegia of childhood from Marybridge Hospital.

Speaker 1 Sophie quickly connects with the Cure AHC Foundation, and this group posts a photo of C on their Facebook page the day of her G-tube surgery, asking for well-wishes.

Speaker 1 C looks up from a hospital bed, a pacifier in her mouth, clutching a teddy bear with stitching that reads, cure AHC.

Speaker 1 This foundation would go on to provide funding for the family to travel to Duke Medical Center in North Carolina to visit their renowned clinic dedicated to the disorder.

Speaker 1 This pattern of reporting from Sophie can be seen clearly in a note from the doctor who ordered the G-Tube placement at Marybridge Hospital.

Speaker 1 Quote, Mom feels strongly that she needs an access point to get her fluids for AHC.

Speaker 1 Mom Mom also is not sure if she will tolerate boluses or fluids in these episodes of vomiting and presumed dehydration.

Speaker 1 Mom feels that having an access point will help during HC episodes and would like her to be on continuous feeds overnight to maintain her hydration and support her fluid goals and nutritional outcomes.

Speaker 1 This information was provided by Hartman, though during objective observation, CH was never seen to have any issues with eating, drinking, vomiting, or dehydration.

Speaker 1 So you'll notice within these notes, there's a lot lot of mom reports, mom feels, mom says this. Dr.
Glick reminds us why the parental history is so important in these cases.

Speaker 3 In medicine, we rely on the honesty and integrity of the parents trying to help their child.

Speaker 3 And unfortunately, in child abuse and medical child abuse, the motivations, I'm not a psychiatrist, but it's not what we're, we don't have a shared mission of getting this child better.

Speaker 3 So therefore,

Speaker 3 this, we have to be kind of more sleuth and ask, look for what I call the big disconnects in what we see and what we hear, you know, with these patients.

Speaker 1 Now, you might be wondering why all this communication hasn't been made simpler in the age of electronic medical records. But it turns out those haven't been quite the godsend that some hoped for.

Speaker 3 Jill Glick at 65, my medical record, the University of Chicago, has a lot of mistakes in it. I don't have diabetes.
I don't have COPD.

Speaker 3 I can't get my record fixed because my primary is not at the University of Chicago.

Speaker 3 He can't go in and get rid of it because somehow that got listed by a mistake and there's no quality improvement. When I was a resident, the residents always look at me and roll their eyes.

Speaker 3 I said, When I was a resident, you got the medical record and you opened up, and the first page was the problems list.

Speaker 3 And you took your pen and you crossed out the ones that no longer existed, and you made a new progress. You said, These are the current medical, and these are your chronic diseases.
That

Speaker 3 communication's has been lost. So Munchausen by proxy cases, MCA cases, we

Speaker 3 help

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 process

Speaker 3 by not having universal medical record.

Speaker 3 Everybody should have a baseline universal medical record.

Speaker 3 And the people who make a lot of money off of EPIC, I mean, Judy, whatever her name is, God bless her, she's a smart lady in the 1970s to come up with electronic record.

Speaker 3 And I was like, this is so cool being a geek. And the next thing I know is I hate it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So that adds to it. So part of one of the things I would always love is that there be a

Speaker 3 national requirement of all electronic records have to talk to each other.

Speaker 3 And not just talk to each other. Show everything.
Like right now, if I go into another hospital, I only get like little snippets.

Speaker 1 Judy, whatever her name is, is Judy Faulkner, founder of Epic, which revolutionized electronic medical records and is currently used for the records of 325 million people.

Speaker 1 This product made her a billionaire. But a side note, before anyone makes a wanted poster with her face on it, she has pledged to give away 99% of her $7.7 billion fortune to charity.

Speaker 1 Good on you, Judy. But as Dr.
Glick says here, because there are multiple proprietary systems for electronic records that don't integrate with each other, this is far from a fix.

Speaker 1 And it's these very cracks in the system that perpetrators exploit, where they see just enough doubt and confusion to keep pushing their story through.

Speaker 1 And Sophie does push this story of C through to the G-tube surgery, but she doesn't stop there.

Speaker 1 It's not long before she's requesting TPN, or total parentarial nutrition, where a child receives intravenous nutrition via a port.

Speaker 1 And throughout these early years of C's life, the evidence mounts that Sophie is taking her daughter down a very dark road.

Speaker 1 Next time.

Speaker 33 The G-Tube cases are the ones that track hardest towards death.

Speaker 33 They're the ones that in the medical literature, you know, that when they talk about just how deadly this type of abuse is, the fact that it is arguably the most deadly of all types of abuse regarding children.

Speaker 1 Nobody Should Believe Me is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dumbop. Our senior producer is Mariah Gossett.
Story editing by Nicole Hill. Research and Fact-Checking by Erin Ajayi.

Speaker 1 And our associate producer is Greta Stromquist. Mixing and Engineering by Robin Edgar.
Administrative support from Nola Carmouche.

Speaker 1 If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchhausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.

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