An Oklahoma mom is facing charges after it was determined that she made her daughter extremely ill by treating her for serious medical conditions that she didn’t have.
Alisha Newman, 34, is a registered nurse who allegedly falsely told medical professionals in multiple states that her 10-year-old daughter suffered from serious conditions, Fox 6 reports.
On May 7, she brought her daughter to the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin where it was determined she’d gone into shock due to acute renal failure and acidosis.
A police complaint states that staff reported that the child’s skin “looked pale and ashen” and that she was “severely ill.”
The cause? Multiple medical treatments she underwent after her mother allegedly made up medical diagnoses.
Newman told the staff at the hospital that her child suffered from “dysautonomia, muscular dystrophy, mitochondrial disease, hypertension and hypotension, and severe dysmotility.”
It was a claim she’d made before with the same hospital — and it’d already been debunked.
The child was checked in 2016 and 2017 by the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, who found no evidence for a “diagnosis of muscular dystrophy or mitochondrial disease.”
A senior staff member at the hospital conducted a check of the child’s full medical history and determined the mother provided false or misleading medical information to different providers, Milwaukee Journal Sentinal reports.
The 10-year-old had a feeding tube, a port for IV fluids, and a pacemaker when she was hospitalized earlier this month. Milwaukee County Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson said:
“This is a case that, in essence, involves a continuing course of conduct and offense that has lasted the entirety of this child’s life.”
On May 26, Newman was charged in Wisconsin with one count physical child abuse and one count of recklessly causing great bodily harm and child neglect.
The mother is suspected of having Munchausen by proxy, a disorder in which a person feigns the illness of another.
The disorder was made well-known by convicted murderer Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who admitted to killing her mother after she was forced to unnecessarily use a wheelchair and a feeding tube her whole life.
Newman’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 7. She is being held on $50,000 bond.