Therefore, in the case "The Secretary, Department of Family and Community Services and the Harper Children [2016] NSWChC 3", the expert testimony of Professor David Isaacs that a certain blood test result was "highly unlikely" to occur naturally or accidentally (without any speculation about motive), was sufficient to refuse the return of the affected child and his younger siblings to the mother. The children had initially been removed from the mothers custody after the blood test results became known. The fact that the affected child quickly improved both medically and behaviourly after being removed was also a factor. Notable cases
Beverley Allitt, a British nurse who murdered four children and injured a further nine in 1991 at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, was diagnosed with Munchausen syndrome by proxy.Wendi Michelle Scott is a Frederick, Maryland, mother who was charged with sickening her four-year-old daughter.The book Sickened, by Julie Gregory, details her life growing up with a mother who had Munchausen by proxy, who took her to various doctors, coached her to act sicker than she was and to exaggerate her symptoms, and who demanded increasingly invasive procedures to diagnose Gregorys enforced imaginary illnesses.Lisa Hayden-Johnson of Devon was jailed for three years and three months after subjecting her son to a total of 325 medical actions – including being forced to use a wheelchair and being fed through a tube in his stomach.
A parent who appears medically knowledgeable, fascinated with medical details and hospital gossip, appears to enjoy the hospital environment, and expresses interest in the details of other patients problems. A highly attentive parent who is reluctant to leave their childs side and who themselves seem to require constant attention. A parent who appears unusually calm in the face of serious difficulties in their childs medical course while being highly supportive and encouraging of the physician, or one who is angry, devalues staff, and demands further intervention, more procedures, second opinions, and transfers to more sophisticated facilities. The suspected parent may work in the health-care field themselves or profess an interest in a health-related job. The signs and symptoms of a childs illness may lessen or simply vanish in the parents absence (hospitalization and careful monitoring may be necessary to establish this causal relationship). A family history of similar or unexplained illness or death in a sibling. A parent with symptoms similar to their childs own medical problems or an illness history that itself is puzzling and unusual. A suspected emotionally distant relationship between parents; the spouse often fails to visit the patient and has little contact with physicians even when the child is hospitalized with a serious illness. A parent who reports dramatic, negative events, such as house fires, burglaries, or car accidents, that affect them and their family while their child is undergoing treatment.