The family’s federal lawsuit alleges the hospital, working alongside San Diego County investigators, used covert video surveillance to monitor the family for more than a month.
Madison Meyer spent much of her early adolescence suffering from a mysterious illness that caused broken bones, dislocated joints and chronic pain, and led to multiple surgeries.
Rady’s child protection team and San Diego County’s child abuse investigators suspected Madison was the victim of a condition called Munchausen syndrome by proxy, also known as factitious disorder imposed on another. It’s a form of child abuse in which a parent fabricates or causes real injuries to a child, with the aim of getting medical attention. The hospital used the surveillance in an effort to prove their suspicion.for victims.
However, Dr. Shalon Nienow, Rady’s division director of child abuse pediatrics who recommended the covert surveillance, confirmed in a court filing that she communicated with the main county investigator about Madison’s care throughout the investigation.On a recent afternoon, Meyer and Gascay flipped through a thick folder of photos, letters, drawings and award certificates on their dining room table. It looks like a scrapbook of keepsakes from Madison’s childhood.
Earlier this year, the judge in the case dismissed part of the Meyer family’s complaint but allowed it to proceed on several claims, including on Fourth Amendment grounds, which covers privacy rights. “She was at surf camp, had fallen off the surfboard and hit her shoulder in the sand,” Gascay recalled.
After a second reconstructive shoulder surgery in the spring of 2018, doctors gave her another diagnosis — complex regional pain syndrome — and urged Meyer and Gascay to enroll their daughter in an in-patient pain management program. Madison returned to Kaiser’s San Diego Medical Center as Meyer and Gascay grew increasingly desperate for answers.
The doctors in New York ran tests that fleshed out Madison’s litany of complications, stemming from her hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, according to the Meyer family’s complaint. Upon returning to San Diego in late January, Madison would be transferred to Rady to receive round-the-clock care. Reese, in her legal response to the complaint, denied involvement in Nienow’s surveillance plan. She states she did not agree to place Madison in a camera-equipped room to “prove Nienow’s hypothesis” and “denies that the use of the video-equipped room was to develop evidence of medical child abuse.”
Meanwhile, the county pursued its investigation after the second hotline referral. Valenzuela again interviewed Meyer and Gascay, according to court documents. The parents claim Nienow never spoke to them. Nienow, in a response filed in court, acknowledged writing the February report but didn’t address its specific contents.
Meyer said he received an urgent call from Rady, asking him to return immediately. He left his half-eaten dinner and encountered staff and security members when he arrived at the hospital. They led him to a conference room, where Valenzuela, Reese and others were waiting, according to the complaint. Valenzuela told Meyer he and his wife no longer had custody of their daughter. The hospital revoked their parental access badges.
“It ruined our family — tore us apart,” Gascay said. “We're doing our best to get our family back together. We're all in therapy.” “It ruined our family — tore us apart. We're doing our best to get our family back together. We're all in therapy.”, medical staff are required to let the child abuse play out in order to gather evidence. Flannery believes a more ethical — and effective — approach is to temporarily separate the parents from a child or require supervised visits. If the child’s condition improves as a result, that’s reliable evidence of potential medical abuse.
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