Jolanda M. from Zevenbergen seemed like the perfect mother. She wanted the best for her ‘sick’ child and wanted to get to the bottom of what was wrong with him. No one was surprised, everyone would. The fact that Jolanda made her son sick herself remained unnoticed until his death. And that is what makes this form of child abuse so serious, according to pediatrician Rian Teeuw. “It’s almost unrecognizable.”
Jolanda M. was sentenced to ten years in prison on Thursday. She claimed for years that her son Mike was all wrong and did everything she could to make the doctors believe that. In the end, she decided to put him on heavy drugs, which cost him his life.
According to experts, Jolanda suffers from Münchhausen by Proxy syndrome. In doing so, a parent makes up or causes his child to be sick in order to get attention. But that term is outdated, according to pediatrician Rian Teeuw. “There are many more reasons why parents do it. It could also be for a custody battle or for financial gain,” she explains. That is why it is nowadays called ‘child abuse by falsification’.
“You can’t make it up so crazy or it happens.”
Every year, Rian Teeuw discovers eight to ten cases of this kind in children referred to the Emma Children’s Hospital-Amsterdam UMC. This varies from parents pretending that their child can no longer walk, to poisoning or diluting formula so that children do not grow. “I even saw a child who, according to the parents, had a brain tumor, but nothing turned out to be true. You can’t make it up so crazy or it happens.”
If she has a suspicion, she reports it to Safe Home, a hotline for child abuse. She has to flip a switch in her head to do that. “Because you always trust parents.” Together with experts, they then collect facts that contradict or, of course, support the parents’ story, because it is important not to miss a disease if there is one. “If a child is not growing, we let the nurses take over the feeding, for example, to see if the child is growing well.”
“There are many children who have had operations that were not necessary at all”
And sometimes the parents and the child are even completely separated. In that case, the juvenile court is necessary. “Once in a while a child has been placed in a foster family that, according to the parents, could not walk. He suddenly turned out to be able to do that there,” says Teeuw. She admits that these are very taxing steps, but necessary. This is evident in the case in Zevenbergen. “There are many children who have had operations that were not necessary at all,” says the pediatrician. “You can find out by being so rigorous.”
It is unclear how often this form of child abuse occurs. Last year, Veilig Thuis received 35 reports from doctors with a suspicion. But that, according to Teeuw, is the tip of the iceberg. “These kinds of parents walk from doctor to doctor. Moreover, they often do not give permission to share information with other hospitals, so that no one keeps an overview. And that puts children at great risk.”
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