Texas mother who put healthy son through 13 unnecessary surgeries claiming he had cancer pleads guilty to medical abuse
DALLAS, TEXAS: On August 15, a 35-year-old woman pleaded guilty to unnecessarily subjecting her young son to more than 320 hospital and doctor visits, which included 13 major surgeries by the time he was eight years old.
Kaylene Bowen-Wright faces two to 20 years in prison on the second-degree felony for medically abusing her son, Christopher since he was 11 months old. The accused claimed that her son suffered from a rare genetic disorder and had cancer to justify the serious medical procedures that he was forced to go through between 2009 and 2016 that eventually landed him in a wheelchair at the age of eight, New York Post reported.
In 2017 when Dallas hospital staff reported to Child Protective Services (CPS) that Christopher did not have cancer or many of the medical conditions that his mother insisted he had, it resulted in the removal of the victim and his two half-siblings from the care of Bowen. Bowen appeared to be suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which has been described as a condition wherein “a person acts as if an individual he or she is caring for has a physical or mental illness when the person is not really sick.”
It is also known as factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), which is a form of abuse, wherein an adult perpetrator “directly produces or lies about illness in another person under his or her care, usually a child under 6 years of age,” often to gain attention or profit monetarily.
In this particular case, Bowen fitted her son with a feeding tube that fed directly into his small intestine, leading to multiple life-threatening blood infections. She also put him on hospice care and tried to get him enlisted for a lung transplant. In order to pay for the several surgical procedures that Bowen claimed that her son needed, she even organized a number of fundraisers.
At the age of three, Ryan Crawford, the boy’s father, was prohibited from visiting his own son as he insisted before the Dallas County family court for years that his son was not sick. "How do you do 13 surgeries? How do you do it?" he asked. "How do you do 13 surgeries and not question the fifth surgery? The sixth surgery?"
“I am happy that she decided to do the right thing. Eventually, the lies had to stop,” Crawford, told the Star-Telegram. “Now, hopefully, those who thought a mother could never do this to their child will see evil does exist.”
Once removed from his mother’s care, Christopher, now 10, is out of the wheelchair and only needs to go to the doctor for physicals each year. He is athletic and does well academically. Crawford is currently the sole managing conservator of his son and the primary decision-maker regarding where his son lives, attends school and the medical treatment he receives. The accused is only allowed supervised visits.
“Medical abuse is under-reported every day,” he said. “Now its time to move forward and make sure no child has to suffer the abuse my son endured.”
Bowen is scheduled for sentencing on October 11.