We’ve seen the media abuse teenagers and abuse victims before. CNN lost a several-hundred-million-dollar defamation suit to Nicholas Sandman when they defamed him in print and on television for smiling in a MAGA hat. The entire media attack machine slandered and defamed Kyle Rittenhouse, who defended himself with deadly force against a convicted pedophile who was trying to kill him along with other miscreants, with constant cries of “he crossed state lines!” which turned out to be a moot point according to the law.
The media often doesn’t stop at defaming children. They like to defame adult abuse victims, too, like Johnny Depp. Court TV and Law and Crime were two of the biggest offenders that carried water for Amber Heard and would not report what actually happened in court to their viewers. Many court “reporters” only report the stories they want the audience to hear and push the narrative the mainstream press wants to be pushed instead of what actually happened in court.
It’s happening again in the Kowalski vs. Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital civil suit, where 17-year-old Maya Kowalski and her family are suing the hospital for their role in medically kidnapping her when she was ten years old. The family says that JHACH drove Maya’s mom Beata to suicide. Not only that, but Maya testified to suffering unbelievable abuse at the hands of nurses, doctors, and social worker Cathi Bedy, who has a previous arrest record for child abuse.
For the background on this complicated case, read my coverage on PJ Media. The heart of the case revolves around the rare pain disorder called complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), which Maya was diagnosed with by more than four CRPS specialists. But when those specialists ordered controversial ketamine treatments for her pain, JHACH doctors disagreed and pointed the loaded gun of the state at her mother, Beata, accusing her of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Related: The Cost of State-Sponsored Medical Tyranny Exposed in Maya Kowalski Trial
Now, Court TV’s Julie Grant has smeared Maya for going to homecoming and celebrating Halloween like a normal teenager. Court TV thought they got a huge scoop when defense attorneys showed photographs of the teen wearing a short homecoming dress and posing for photos with her boyfriend. It is JHACH’s only defense to claim that their forced imprisonment of Maya didn’t harm her and actually saved her life (despite her subsequent PTSD diagnosis from that trauma). Their big reveal was, look at this girl who is clearly not in pain dancing and having fun with friends! She’s a big liar!
Grant went on a Twitter rant, throwing out the debunked accusations about Maya's dead mother and spreading the salacious stories about Maya.
What 5 minutes of the trial did she watch and make this conclusion? pic.twitter.com/atxnLsumZ2
— Tessa💜🐒 (@DrTessaT) November 2, 2023
Days after Maya Kowalski's attorney said she was having a CRPS flare with lesions, photos on social media show her celebrating at parties. https://t.co/n9pxqf1J7u
— Court TV (@CourtTV) November 1, 2023
Of course, anyone with a chronic condition knows that life doesn’t stop just because you're feeling unwell. People began posting photos of themselves looking happy while describing how they were actually suffering from some painful condition. In other words, you can’t see a hidden syndrome in a photograph.
at my daughter’s recent wedding. I was on day 5 of a migraine that no meds could relieve. Turns out I have a brain tumor. I could barely make it through the wedding. See my face? People with chronic pain learn to pretend to be okay. We have to live our lives! Do better Court TV! pic.twitter.com/OGc7h8v2yg
— Mildred Hornblower (@MildredHrn1) November 1, 2023
But, cried Court TV, she said she was too ill to be in court that week and then got caught partying that very weekend! CRPS, like many unseen and poorly understood disorders, is aggravated by stress. I can’t think of anything more stressful for a teenage abuse victim than to sit in court and watch abuser after abuser take the stand and continue to deny what they did to her. Not only did JHACH’s witnesses deny Maya’s medical condition, but they all accused her of being the second coming of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." Nurse after nurse described her as either swearing and spitting at them like a possessed maniac or, conversely, the sweetest child they ever knew whom they “loved” and who also loved being in the hospital separated from her family and friends. (Insert eye roll here.)
It was stomach-churning for me. No wonder Maya would rather spend some time hanging out with friends! But the defense team decided to further traumatize her by flashing photographs of her in a short dress across the television, which the internet quickly judged her for unfairly even though every other teen girl is wearing the exact same style to school dances.
They sexualized and defamed a teenager in order to protect their clients from the very bad things they've done. And boy, oh boy, are they bad! If Court TV really wanted a story, it would have told the one that came out in court on Thursday instead of wasting space on some kids trick-or-treating.
It turns out that JHACH was under a federal investigation for “widespread and egregious” failures to address patient safety, communication failures involving risk management and higher administration that put lives in jeopardy, negligently harming kids in their heart unit, and, unbelievably, having a surgical staff that didn’t wash their hands, among other horrors. This was all going on while Maya was incarcerated on the 7th floor of the pediatric intensive care unit. The investigation also found that the hospital had major risks for infectious disease spreading due to poor standards. It came out in the trial that Maya’s infusion port went unflushed for a month until her mother (who was accused of medically “abusing” her) demanded they clean it.
There are definitely medical abusers in this story. None of them have the last name Kowalski. But the real bombshell was that JHACH’s attorneys put an expert witness on the stand who said the hospital had done nothing wrong and had passed all the inspections and joint commission reports during the time Maya was getting “treatment” there. That was a lie, and the plaintiff’s lawyers uncovered it. This led to the judge storming out of the room after asking, very seriously, “Let me make sure I understand. Did the defense adduce evidence to have your witness bless the hospital and make it appear to the jury that everything was hunky dory with the joint commission?” After listening to the defense stutter and fail to come up with an answer, Judge Carroll abruptly stood up and left the room, announcing that he needed a five-minute break. He looked like he was going to strangle the quaking attorneys in front of him.
When Judge Carroll returned, he let JHACH’s attorneys know that due to this incident, he was ordering JHACH to turn over all relevant documents they had withheld from the plaintiff and ordered the hospital to send their corporate representative to be deposed on Friday. This development is huge. For one, the defense was caught lying to the judge and the jury, and because of it, the entire trial timeline was upended as Judge Carroll informed them they could kiss their end dates goodbye. Further, it looks like the jury is going to get to hear all about the investigations into JHACH from both the Department of Health and Human Services and the joint commission. If those reports are shown to the jury, it’s proof of everything the plaintiff alleged. It’s game over. The smoking gun.
THIS was the real story. But Court TV and the New York Post ran salacious photos of a minor abuse victim trying to live a normal teen life after her childhood and her mother were cruelly stolen from her by the crooks at JHACH. They thought it was a bigger story to smear a minor child who has seen more sadness than any of us could imagine and not the potential disbarment of JHACH’s attorneys and the nuclear bomb that the “immediate jeopardy” finding from the joint commission set off. Let that sink in. Court TV didn't report on the biggest in-court drama we've seen...maybe ever!
We have gone beyond the point of a negligent press and hurtled right into the realm of a deliberately evil press that will ignore a huge story of corruption, lies, and scandal that led to the deaths and abuse of innocent people in favor of fake news that serves only to hurt the victim of that corruption.
Julie Grant and Court TV should be ashamed of themselves. They’re not reporters. They’re worse than tabloid journalists because at least the tabloids get some stories right once in a while. They are yellow journalists, scraping the bottom of the barrel and exploiting and abusing a traumatized young woman for clicks.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member