Maya Kowalski, her brother Kyle, and her father Jack are suing Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (JHACH) for false imprisonment and medical child abuse. You can read about the background of this case in previous reporting here. During the damages phase of the trial the plaintiff’s lawyer called multiple experts to the stand on Friday to put a monetary value on the consequences of a failed attempt by the hospital to impose its will over the will of Maya’s parents.
But how do you put a price on the trauma suffered at the hands of state agents acting in collusion with hospital officials who removed a sick ten-year-old from her family when those actions led to the suicide of her mother? Is there a number high enough that would remedy a wound that deep?
This is the question that the jury is faced with if they decide that the plaintiffs were harmed. While the economic testimony was interesting, the most riveting testimony came from Maya, the victim, who told the jury through tears what she suffered during her forced isolation from all of her friends and family while suffering a crippling pain disease called complex regional pain disorder (CRPS).
The hospital didn’t believe her.
Child abuse doctor Sally Smith believed Maya’s mom, Beata, was faking her daughter’s malady and in response, she removed all the child’s medications and directed the staff to do things like isolate the child while being monitored on video to see if she could walk when no one was looking. They would make Maya wait to go to the bathroom, hoping she would jump up and go by herself. That never happened. Instead, Maya was forced to wet and soil herself when nurses wouldn’t come to help her to the toilet.
Maya testified that the neglect she suffered at the hands of JHACH included being dirty, unwashed, and not having nice-smelling soaps or shampoo. Her hair became so matted, her aunt had to cut it off. She was stripped and photographed without her consent for unclear reasons by nurses and the staff social worker Cathi Bedy, who had been arrested for child abuse in 2007 and was still retained by JHACH to work with children. Those photos were never entered into the medical record, though Johns Hopkins’ attorneys keep insinuating there was a medical purpose for them—though they have yet to produce a witness who has articulated what that medical purpose was.
This is what state-sponsored and hospital approved PTSD looks like. Why are they allowed to do this to people? #TakeCareOfMaya #MayaKowalski pic.twitter.com/SD9uLRnzY9
— Megan Fox (@MeganFoxWriter) October 21, 2023
The fallout for Maya from the trauma she suffered will be life-long. Her daily life is impacted in ways people without trauma-based disorders can’t understand. She reports feeling panic when she hears beeping noises, like seatbelt notifications or trucks backing up that sound like hospital ward noises, and she has to avoid foods that she ate in the hospital because she will get extremely sad if she eats them again. Maya also said she sees her tormentor, Bedy, around every corner. Every woman who resembles Bedy even a little can sent Maya into a panic attack. But perhaps the worst effect of the trauma is the deep fear Maya will feel for the rest of her life of seeking medical care. For someone with a complex disorder, this can be deadly.
Is there any doubt that if you or I treated our children like JHACH treated Maya—neglecting hygiene, invading privacy, forcing unwanted procedures, and using physical force—we would face a child abuse investigation? JHACH never investigated the way Maya was treated. The ethics department claimed to have never heard about it. JHACH former ethics committee member Dr. Laura Vose admitted an internal investigation wasn’t done and JHACH’s lawyers have not put anyone on the stand to refute that so far. It seems impossible that a hospital would not do an internal review of a patient they took custody of whose mother committed suicide and left notes blaming JHACH.
We still haven't heard any testimony by anyone at @allchildrens that they DID do an internal review of a situation that led to maternal suicide. I don't think they did one. Do you? #MayaKowalski pic.twitter.com/iHt6439BlH
— Megan Fox (@MeganFoxWriter) October 21, 2023
All of the neglect Maya reported that she suffered was done to her by hospital staff and Florida DCF colluders in the hopes of catching her or her mother lying about her condition. Notes in the hospital’s risk management file confirm this. The result, according to medical experts in the field of CRPS was to set back her recovery, perhaps permanently. Maya also testified that the experience gave her PTSD and chronic depression. The little girl that was admitted to JHACH doesn’t exist anymore. The one who was finally released to her father after her mother’s suicide is a girl who will need lifelong care to help her cope with what was done to her in the name of “child protection.”
The Kowalski family isn’t the only family suffering the trauma of state-imposed PTSD. The citizens of Lehigh County Pennsylvania have recently come forward to accuse child abuse doctor Debra Jenssen of false allegations against them that led to the removal of their children, false criminal charges, and bankruptcy. Many of them told county commissioners that they suffer from PTSD from this state-sponsored and hospital-directed abuse of their due process and parental rights.
Child "Protective" Services and their flying monkeys in corporate hospitals are destroying lives and inflicting mental disorders on the populate. Is this what Thomas Jefferson envisioned? #MayaKowalski #LehighCounty #LVHN pic.twitter.com/1PBBxcA4zu
— Megan Fox (@MeganFoxWriter) October 21, 2023
Is this what our founders imagined when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? How did we get to a moment in America where the state is willfully and knowingly allowed to lie, fabricate, and oppress the People with the help of cronies in Big Medicine—and they do it openly and in our faces because they are immune from prosecution?
In the Kowalski case, the hospital got immunity for making the call to DCF which started the whole horrible ball rolling. Imagine that! No matter if the allegations were false or fabricated, the hospital cannot be held accountable for making a hotline call based on questionable information that began the nightmare the Kowalskis lived through. All over the country, laws have been written protecting state actors and their colluders with immunity when they perpetrate horrific abuse against the citizenry. Why do we allow it? Is this a government of the People, for the People, and by the People or not?
Here’s the immunity law in Florida that JHACH gets to hide behind.
1)(a) Any person, official, or institution participating in good faith in any act authorized or required by this chapter, or reporting in good faith any instance of child abuse, abandonment, or neglect to the department or any law enforcement agency, shall be immune from any civil or criminal liability which might otherwise result by reason of such action.
The idea that JHACH acted in “good faith” is debatable to anyone who has looked at the evidence in this case but the judge already ruled that they did indeed have a good faith basis and so immunity applies whether we agree or not. While JHACH can be held responsible for everything they did to the Kowalskis before making that call to the state (and they did a lot which is currently being litigated), they will never answer for all the things they did after making that call. These kinds of laws should not exist and only exist to protect government goons and their conspirators.
If lawsuits are the only way to get any justice and our laws no longer favor the People but instead favor the government actors who clearly prefer jackboots and authoritarian rule, we are headed for an unspeakable end to this great experiment of freedom.
Wake up, America.
