The young woman at the center of a medical negligence case that culminated in her mother’s suicide testified Friday how she blames herself for the shocking death.
“I feel like if I had let him think he was okay, maybe he wouldn’t have taken the step of ending his life to get me out of there,” Maya Kowalski, now 17, said of her forced hospital stay, adding: “I feel like it’s my fault.”
Kowalski and her family are suing Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg for $220 million, claiming she was detained against her will and separated from her family for three months.
Kowalski, who was just 10 years old at the time, was admitted to the center in 2016 for treatment for severe pain.
His mother, Beata Kowalski, told doctors he suffered from a rare neurological disease called complex regional pain syndrome.
Previous doctors, he said at the time, had given him ketamine to relieve his symptoms.
Maya Kowalski took the stand in the $220 million case this week. THOMAS BENDER / HERALD-TRIBUNE Pool photo / Thomas Bender / Sarasota Herald-Tribune Pool Photo / Thomas Bender / USA TODAY NETWORK Beata Kowalski committed suicide after being separated from her daughter for three months. Courtesy of Netflix
But hospital staff became skeptical of both Kowalski’s physical complaints and her mother’s unorthodox demands for treatment.
Concluding that Beata suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy (where caregivers fake a child’s condition to get attention), they banned her from seeing Maya and alerted Florida child welfare authorities.
Maya was then involuntarily made a ward of the state and did not see her mother for 87 days.
Facing child abuse charges and distraught over the separation, Beats hanged herself in the garage of her family home in January 2017.
Unaware of the suicide, Maya testified this week that she woke up around 2 a.m. the next morning.
“I was crying, ‘I miss my mom, I love my mom,’” she said. “I had the feeling. I felt it.”
The case eventually became the subject of the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” released earlier this year.
Maya, now a high school senior, tearfully recounted her experience on the stand Friday and told jurors that she feels in danger at all times, even in her own home.
“In many ways I still feel trapped in my 10- and 11-year-old body,” she said. “That’s where my headspace has been living for the last six and a half years.”
The Kowalskis accuse Johns Hopkins Hospital in St. Petersburg of unfairly detaining Maya. Mike Lang/USA TODAY NETWORK
But the hospital’s attorneys have responded that medical staff had legitimate concerns.
They argued that ketamine treatments are fraught with risks and that Beata was requesting unusually high doses to treat her daughter’s symptoms.
They have noted that a previous court found that hospital staff acted out of sincere concern.
“This Court has determined that Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital reported in good faith suspicions of child abuse against Maya Kowalski,” a Sept. 12 request for special jury instructions states, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
But Maya testified this week that she still suffers from debilitating symptoms and that hospital staff cruelly mocked her condition while she was separated from her mother.
Maya’s father, Jack Kowalski, filed the $220 million lawsuit in 2018, alleging false imprisonment, medical negligence and infliction of emotional distress.
The case is ongoing.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn