23-Year-Old Mum Poisons Her 4-Year-Old Daughter To Get Attention On Facebook
A Gold Coast mother who poisoned her young daughter with chemotherapy drugs to get attention has been jailed for six years.
By Sadho Ram — 12 Jun 2014, 02:46 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
An Australian mother has been jailed for deliberately poisoning her otherwise healthy 4-year-old daughter with chemotherapy drugs
The 23-year-old Gold Coast mother has been jailed for six years after she pleaded guilty to feeding her young daughter chemotherapy drugs in a bid for attention.
Image via news.com.auA Gold Coast mother who poisoned her healthy daughter with cancer drugs in order to draw attention to herself will spend at least two years in jail. The mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced to a maximum of six years in jail at Brisbane district court on Wednesday for what Judge Anthony Rafter called an "incomprehensible" betrayal of her daughter's trust.
abc.net.auBut because the woman has already spent 426 days in custody she will be eligible for parole on April 10 next year, the court was told.
theguardian.com
The 23-year-old woman pleaded guilty last October to grievous bodily harm by giving her daughter the drugs that she bought over the Internet. The court heard the girl was three-and-a-half when the poisoning started.
The woman admitted last October that she gave her daughter the cancer drugs over a 10-month period, between August 3, 2012, and April 11, 2013.
sundayworld.com
Judge Rafter said: "Your daughter must have experienced pain and discomfort," he said. "You caused your daughter severe suffering and a life-threatening illness, she was required to undergo evasive medical procedures."
theguardian.com
Puzzled medical health professionals only suspected the young girl was being poisoned when she became gravely ill — to the point where her body stopped producing essential bone marrow — and would most likely die
Prosecutor Glen Cash said police confirmed doctors’ suspicions when they secretly searched the mum’s home — while she visited her daughter a Brisbane’s Royal Children’s Hospital — and found a pill crusher, drug packaging and numerous online purchase receipts for the drug Cyclophosphamide.
couriermail.com.au
The court was told the mum had purchased at least 290 tabs of the drug — with the brand name Cytoxan — used in the treatment of malignant cancers and auto-immune diseases.
sundayworld.com
Mr Cash said the mum later admitted to police that she bought the drugs online on at least five of six occasions and was aware at an early stage they were making her daughter extremely sick — with symptoms including severe nausea, mouth sores, hair loss, diarrhoea and bone marrow suppression.
dailymail.co.uk"(The mum) did so in order to attract attention for herself. She procured toxic drugs ... and administered them to her daughter knowing they would cause her (serious) harm."
The court was told woman at one time tried to convince her daughter the tablets were meant to stop her skin from wrinkling, while later telling the child’s grandmother the pills were steroids prescribed by a physician.
couriermail.com.au
The girl did not have cancer, and was hospitalised with life-threatening illnesses as a result of taking the drugs and spent long periods in hospital.
theguardian.com
Her motive, say prosecutors, was attention. As her daughter’s health deteriorated, the woman turned to Facebook to chronicle the ongoing “fight for life,” attempting to evoke sympathy by describing the stricken child’s dire need for a bone-marrow transplant. Which garnered widespread support and even attracted a small amount of donations for medical treatment.
abc.net.auAlthough at one point close to death, the girl has since made a good recovery, the court heard, and has been placed in the custody of her grandparents
The maternal grandmother, outside court on Wednesday, now cares for the young girl, who had been poisoned with chemotherapy drugs
Image via dailymail.co.ukBarrister Catherine Morgan, who was representing the mother, said the girl was now being cared for by her maternal grandmother. "She confirms [the girl] is indeed a healthy, happy little girl who started prep, who misses her mother," she said. Ms Morgan told the court it was a sad and disturbing case.
time.com
It is unlikely the woman will ever regain custody of her children, who now live with their maternal grandmother. The grandmother told reporters outside court that: “It was really hard, it was heartbreaking, but I'm not going to focus on that. She's healthy now.”
sundayworld.com
Despite the ordeal, the grandmother, who is now caring for the little girl, said the family was sticking by her daughter who won't be eligible for parole until 2015. ‘She's my daughter… she's going to get the help she needs,’ she said.
couriermail.com.au
According to her legal team, the woman had been suffering from an extremely rare mental disorder known as Factitious Disorder By Proxy
Defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as “the deliberate production or feigning of physical or psychological signs or symptoms in another person who is under the individual’s care.”
time.com
The woman had also faked symptoms to have her own healthy appendix removed, the court was told. However, a treating psychiatrist did not diagnose the woman with a mental illness.
abc.net.au