July 6, 2023 • 33 mins
Katie interviews Andrea Dunlop, the host of a true crime podcast called 'Nobody Should Believe Me.’ The two talk all about the podcast’s focus: Munchausen by Proxy, or the criminal act of exaggerating, inducing or fabricating illness in a child.
Andrea shares her personal connection to the topic in regard to her sister, and how her experience influenced her in raising her own children.
The novelist then shares knowledge that she’s learned on warning signs and debunked assumptions about MBP.
Finally, curious to know what advice Andrea has for parents who suspect a friend of theirs has MBP? Find out the answer in this interesting episode.
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Casby Bias
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Katie's crib a production of Shondaland Audio in
partnership with iHeartRadio. What advice would you give to a parent, like,
if they suspect a friend of theirs has MVP, what
would be an appropriate way to recognize and support them
without overstepping any boundaries.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I understand how uncomfortable this is. I understand how terific
it is to think that someone in your life is
doing this. So I think we just all have to
keep in mind, like what the stakes actually are. If
this is happening, you have to report it. We always
recommend to people that they report it to CPS and
law enforcement because it is a matter for both of
(00:41):
those entities. And as my colleague, Detective Weber always says,
report it to both and hope that one of them
knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Katie's CRIBB. How'd you like
that intro? You're getting a really chill Katie today, isn't
that interesting? And I got a great night sleep last night.
That's not the norm at all. I think it's like
my body's in full on preparation because I'm about to
embark on a whole bunch of days where I don't
(01:16):
have any childcare support. Adam is super busy in pretzel Land.
My parents aren't here, my nanny isn't here, et cetera, etc.
So it's like I'm in the calm before the shit storm. People.
I'm really excited about today's episode. It's probably one of
the most interesting Katie's Crib episodes we've ever done. I
(01:37):
didn't know much about the topic. I've done a ton
of research in prep all for our guest today, who
goes by the name Andrea Dunlop. Andrea is amazing. She
is an author, she is a consultant, She is a
podcast host herself, and she is coming on the pod
today to talk all about something called Munchausen by Proxy
(01:58):
and what her personal connection is to the topic. Her
previous novels include Losing the Light, She Regrets Nothing, We
Came here to Forget, Broken Bay, and her most recent one,
Women Are the Fiercest Creatures. Andrea is the host, like
I mentioned, of a true crime podcast called Nobody Should
Believe Me, and the show is dedicated to stories about
(02:20):
Munchausen by Proxy, and she talks about what her experience
was like working closely with people that have been through
such a painful situation. She's also the co creator of
Munchausen Support, which is a nonprofit dedicated to providing resources
for frontline professionals, families, and survivors dealing with Munchausen by proxy.
Andrea lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and her
(02:42):
two children, Fiona and Column Welcome to Katie's Crib. Andrea, Hi,
Andrea Hi. It's such a pleasure to meet you.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Oh so nice to meet you too.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Thank you for sending me so many books. I'm so
impressed by the amount of things you have written. Our
listeners are all cut up in the know from our
intro to today's episode of How Impressive You Are. Munchausen
by proxy is something that a lot of people don't
know about, other than like the things they might have
(03:20):
seen in movies. You know a few storylines here and there.
Can you explain to our audience what exactly Munchausen bi
proxy is?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yes, and thank you, Thank you so much for having
me on, Katie. Is such a pleasure to be here
with you. So munchhause On bi proxy is the criminal
act of exaggerating, inducing, or fabricating illness in your child Munchausen,
which is called the official DSM. That's basically when when
someone does those same things themselves, so again exaggerating, inducing
(03:53):
or fabricating an illness in yourself for the purposes of
sympathy and attention. Munchausen by proxy is the word I
use the most because that's the one people are familiar with,
if they're familiar with it at all, right, But then
I think that also adds to a lot of the
sort of confusion and mystery around the topic. They are
pretty closely related. But of course, wow, Munchausen biproxy is
(04:14):
especially important because it involves abuse of a child, whereas
Munchausen does not.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
And when you have Munchausen or Munchausen by proxy, do
they know what they're doing or is it different case
by case.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
That's a great question, because it's a really important point.
So Munchausen and Munchausen bi proxy are characterized by intentional deception,
you know, in the case of parents, like there are
some parents that may take their kid to the doctor
too much because they're anxious. Obviously, you and I are
both moms, especially like first time moms those things are
just in a different bucket, right, and much easier to
(04:51):
deal with, because then if the mom just really needs
some help, or even something really serious like postpartum psychosis,
then it's a question of okay, this needs help. They
are not intentionally harming their children with these offenders, And
again with those munch house and behaviors that we're talking about,
they understand what they're doing, they understand right from wrong.
(05:12):
In a criminal context, that's a really important distinction because
I think that people get very caught up in these
cases with what's going on mentally with the mother, and
I think that's just because it's so hard to wrap
your head around this behavior. And I would argue that
we should also be treating offenders when appropriate, But of
course you always have to be looking out for the
(05:33):
well being of the children. And so when you're doing
these investigations into this, what they're looking for is again
intentional deception, when someone is lying about what's in the
previous record, or inventing things where their child has tested
negative for something and then they go to another doctor
and say they tested positive for it. So that kind
of thing god again very different than like someone seeking
(05:55):
a second opinion, or someone who just has a child
that has a medical a bit of medical mystery thing, right,
I mean, of course that happens.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
How can you identify if someone has Munchausen by proxy?
Is it just like it's like the intent is different.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I've become very convinced talking to experts that I think
we should be aware of like the warning signs. And
then also warning signs are not evidence. So the only
way that you can determine whether or not abuse has
occurred is to do an investigation that should be both
a CPS investigation and a criminal investigation, because CPS and
(06:33):
law enforcement, you know, they have two really different jobs.
This is something I've learned a lot about that's actually
been really fascinating for me. I think for parents, like
CPS is this sort.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Of looming that's child protective Service? Sorry, child Protective Service? No, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's good.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So CPS's job is to determine whether or not a
child is safe in the home, right, so not to
determine whether or not a crime has been committed. Law
enforcement is determining whether a crime has been committed. So
child abuse is of course a crime, and so really
the only way that you can figure out whether this
has been committed is to have someone do a full
medical record review. So again looking for those discrepancies, those
(07:10):
kinds of discrepancies that I mentioned, sort of someone going
to a bunch of different doctors and telling those doctors
different things. We see a lot of like parents interfering
with tests.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
This is wild. Yeah, and okay, I'm interrupting. Okay, So
what are the things that so parents can fake something?
They can like you said, go to one doctor, go
to another doctor, lie and said something came out positive,
that was negative. They're actually meddling with medical information.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
So when you take your child to the pediatrician, what
does that look like? You bring them in there and
the pediatrician says, mom, what's going on with your child? Right?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Everything normal? We have normal peeps, We have normal poos.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
How are they eating?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
How are they eating?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
How are they sleeping? Yeah? Are there any other problems?
So I think that sometimes this gets mischaracterized as something
that can only be pulled off by this sort of
manipulative mastermind type of person, but in fact, it's unfortunately
very easy to commit. So doctors and pediatricians are trained
(08:15):
to take the word of their patients. And that's as
it should be, right because, of course, most parents would
never lie to a doctor about what's going on with
their child, especially some of these things we see in
babies and younger children. It's just as simple as a
mom going in and saying, oh, my child's just not
gaining weight and I don't know why. And then you
have these progressive interventions of first they put them on
(08:37):
one kind of feeding tube, and then they put them
on a surgical feeding tube and have all of these
interventions because they can't figure out why the child is
not gaining weight. And then the reason the child is
not gaining weight is because the mother is not feeding
that child. But a doctor sitting in an office with
a mother would never know that from a ten minute conversation.
That's the kind of thing that happens in these cases.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Wow, okay, tell us a little bit about your sister please,
and your own personal relationship to Munchausen by proxy.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, So starting off with some very important disclaimers. My
sister has not been charged with a crime. She has
been investigated twice. We have not been in touch with
each other for about twelve years now. My family and
I fell out. She cut us out of her lives
after the first investigation. So that is how I learned
(09:30):
about this. That's where I come to it. I had
these experiences with her before her children were born, where
she had some of these again Munchhaus and behaviors. Right. So,
the most notable of being she had said she was
pregnant with twins and lost them about six months in.
I completely thought she was really pregnant and it, however,
(09:50):
it all sort of unraveled. She did not lose that
pregnancy when she said she did. It's very much our suspicion,
collective suspicion that she was never pregnant at all. That
was the most alarming instance of lying about something about
her health. There were others. She shaved part of her
head in high school and said she was losing her hair,
and so that pattern had been going on for a
long time. It was just this thing that would come
(10:13):
in and out a bit. And then after her first
child was born, that's when we got really scared in
because we had those fears. She really cut us out
of her life.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
What was she doing to her first kid that set
off the alarms? Before you were cut out of her life,
did you have personal experience of things that you saw
that she was doing. Obviously she had a pattern growing
up for whatever reason, and now she has a kid
and it transfers on to this child.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, And of course, like I want to put all
the caveats because I want to say first of all,
that I do have a lot of documentation of a
lot of things, So I'll just say that that first off.
But yeah, I'm not a mental health professional. I'm not
going to diagnose my sister with anything. I can only
sort of say what we observed and what we were told.
So her son was born a couple of months. Early
(11:06):
premies are, I've come to learn, extremely common in these cases.
Now I will say too that, like anything that I mentioned,
whether it's eating issues, premies, cistic fibrosis, just because we
see a lot of them in these cases does not
mean that we should be looking upon parents who have premies.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, like, oh my gosh, you were a premature labor
correct prox.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
It's not a causal relationship that way. In fact, doctor
Mark Feldman, who's one of the top experts in the
country who I've gotten really close with. He has a book,
Dying to Be Ill, that profiles a bunch of people
who have much house and munch as of by proxy,
and he had a couple of perpetrators actually tell him
how they induced premature labor. He was born premature and
then had this failure to thrive thing happening. He was
(11:51):
just having trouble gaining weight. We were concerned because it
was progressing towards getting a GET tube, which is the
surgically placed tube. My parents went to my family doctor,
who had been our family doctor for like one hundred years,
and really at that point, we didn't know anything. We
(12:13):
didn't know the definition of this. We didn't know this
was really a thing. Just was like a bad gut feeling,
specifically because of the previous fake pregnancy and all that
sort of lead up. And so she was the one
who gave us that term, and she suggested that my
mom speak to my sisters, her son's pediatrician. My mom
(12:33):
went and did that, and we didn't know what was
going to happen after that. What happened was CPS did
an emergency removal. We did not know CPS was going
to be called. You don't know if you've never had
until you know a golement, right, if you've never been
in that situation where like CPS gets called, then you
have no idea what to expect, and it was very scary,
and we really tried to sort of like maintain that
(12:56):
contact with her, and my parents were just beside themselves.
They didn't know what to do. That investigation really came
to nothing. There was a CPS investigation, the state did
not make any attempts to take custody of her children.
It sort of just fizzled out.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Did he end up getting the tube? Did it go
down that track?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I believe not. Unfortunately, CPS revealed to my sister that
my mother had made that call, which they're not supposed
to do. You're supposed to be able to anonymously report
to CPS. And again, of course she didn't report to CPS.
She talked to the doctor. They revealed that information to it.
So it put sort of an immediate division in my
family of I can't believe you would ever think I
would do this, And if you're not with me, you're
(13:39):
against then you're dead to me, right, Yes, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You mentioned in a previous interview in Vanity Fair that
your nephew the one we're speaking of. I'm assuming it's
this one, not her second child spent years suffering from
a series of medical ailments. So if you've been out
of touch, have you been able to find out anything
since then? How did you find out that there was
a CPS investigation a second time that she definitely was
in charge all of that.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
We found out about the second investigation because a police
detective called us. So that was several years ago, and
that was with her daughter. That investigation went from twenty
eighteen to twenty twenty. Law enforcement was not involved for
the first time, so the second time, law enforcement was involved.
When law enforcement gets involved in a case like this,
one of the things they do is all of these
collateral interviews, right, So they're looking to talk to family members,
(14:26):
talk to the school teachers, any medical professionals treating the child,
anything like that. Obviously, we did not have information about
her daughter because we had never met her daughter, but
we'd heard things here and there over the years. She's
not in touch with anyone from my extended family anymore.
She's out of touch with all of her friends that
she grew up with. But we did find out things
(14:47):
here and there that she put on social media. She
had another baby that was born very premature and did
not make it. She posted a picture of that on
social media, so we heard about that. Her daughter, than
the one that she was investigated for, was born again
very premature, so I think at about twenty four weeks, which,
(15:07):
having been through a pregnancy, you'll know, that's very little
so early.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
That's like six months right right at the sort of
right at the is it a viable pregnancy at all?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah? Oh wow. The hospital that was treating her daughter
posted like something on their care page about her, and
a relative sent it to us. But really, we got
this call from this police detective and then again they're
not able to tell you that much about the investigation,
but we just filled him in on our previous concerns
and some of these previous events. Also, my sister was
(15:38):
in the media, so she called up a reporter who
was doing a series on what he has characterized as
falsely accused mothers. I sort of know bits and pieces
I get, I guess is the answer.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Wow, And we just really don't know if your niece
or nephew are thriving, if they're okay, if they're safe.
My goodness, Now in your work, since this has so
(16:14):
personally affected you, and your family because of her disease,
which I guess she's never been technically diagnosed.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Well, yeah, and I do. I do want to make
sure to put that caveat in now. Like everything I'm saying,
this is information that's in the public record, it's accessible.
No one gets diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy in the
absence of being charged with a crime. Right. So even
the famous case of our era, the Deiti Blanchard case, right,
the Gypsy Rose case, the only one anyone's heard of,
(16:44):
if they have heard of this at all, she was
never charged with a crime, and she was never diagnosed
with Munchausen by proxy. Right, So it's not something that
someone goes I'm having these tris now. I wish it was.
I wish it was right where if someone was having
right thoughts, having intrusive thoughts, they could go and seek help.
Even another pretty famous modern era case is the Lacy
Spears case. And she unfortunately killed her little boy, and
(17:08):
she was sitting in prison for it and still said
she didn't do it. It's not something where people take accountability
for it.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Like, you're not going you're not seeking to be diagnosed,
you're not seeking to be fixed, or you think nothing's
wrong and that this is normal.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Correct, it's characterized by deception.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
What has surprised you the most from the stories you've
heard in learning from other MBP survivors.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, certainly the similarities and the patterns are very strong.
So a lot of the feeding issues. Also a lot
of seizure disorders, allegedly so seizures that no one else
is witnessing. It's just an incredibly strong pattern. So I
think that has been very surprising to think, like, oh,
you have this very weird case if you look at
it in isolation, but then if you look at it
(17:56):
next to a bunch of other cases, they sort of
all look the same. And then I think the revelation
that most of the experts that I've talked to have said,
this is probably about as common as any other form
of child abuse. Not every other family on the block.
We all know somebody who we all have some sort
of tangential experience with, like childhood sex abuse, right like,
very few of us are going to go through our
(18:16):
life never meeting someone that was the survivor. And it's
the same with this and that that's what the experts believe,
and certainly my anecdotal experience having had the podcast out
and hearing from a lot of people would lead me
to believe that is true.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Also, wow, when you look back, is it like memento
where you're like, you look back on her life and
what she was like as a child, and you were like,
oh my god, Like this has always been there. There
was Munchausen.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I don't really. There's certainly things like once we were teenagers,
like that thing with the hair and then the pregnancies,
but I had a really nice childhood with her, like
and that's one of the hardest things to square. And
it was really beautiful for me to get to meet
Hope you bar as siblings because we had a lot
of those same experiences where we just think my relationship
with this person ended in a really sad way. But
(19:09):
I still have all of these memories of them growing
up and they were a part of my family. I
think of it at this point as like a death, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And so it's very hard to reconcile. Though this is
a long time ago that this happened, there was a
really long time that I was grieving losing that relationship.
That's still hard some days.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
The cases that you've quoted talked about so far in
this episode. Do you think you could run us through quick?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah? So the Hope You bar case is the one
that we profiled in season one of my podcasts. We
interviewed her, which was that was a very fascinating experience
to sit down with her. So she is a woman
who spent ten years in prison for abuse of her
youngest child. The charges related to taking blood out of
her daughter via a central line that was one that
(19:59):
involved a fake cystic fibrosis diagnosis, and she poisoned her daughter.
So that yeah, these cases are very disturbing, but the
good news is in that one her daughter, I believe
just recently turned eighteen. Her and her other two kids,
they have a great dad and wonderful supportive family. So they,
(20:19):
as far as I know, are really thriving and did
really well. And I think that is a that's a
good story. That's a story of an intervention that went
in a positive direction. Well. Yeah, the other case that
I mentioned Lacey Spears, that was someone who killed her
four year old little boy via salt poisoning. She did
(20:40):
spend some time in prison. I believe she's out now,
and I believe her family stuck by her. It's very
interesting to me to see how which way the family
goes in a lot of these cases, because I've seen
a lot of family members that do stand by the
perpetrator and say she could never do this, she would
never do this, regardless of what evidence is put in
front of them. I think that's something I've really learned
(21:00):
in this process is that, like, people don't make decisions
about what they believe based on evidence the way that
we think they do right.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
No, they make but on how they feel right exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Their emotional truth. And like emotional is very strong, and
like the resistance to the idea that a mother could
do this, especially a mother who seems loving and loving
is not acting in any way that seems psychologically abnormal.
It's very disturbing to think that you could just have
this like lovely, nice mom next door, and then she's
(21:35):
doing this in her secret life. The other case that
is one that probably more people know about than any
other one is the Dede Blanchard case, which was fictionalized
on that show The Act, and then there's also a
great HBO documentary.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Pole were obsessed with it.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yes, Joey King, Yeah, purcha shark Cat played TV Blanchard,
and so that is that is a very wild case.
That is one in which the victim actually conspired with
an internet boyfriend to murder her mother. Gipsy is in jail,
I think for maybe like one more year and then
she will be out on parole. But that sort of
has an extra element of wildness because of the murder.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Wow, how has your personal experience with your sister and
munch House in my proxy influenced you in raising your
own children?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, that's a great question. There was a long period
of my life where I didn't want to think about
any of those events that had happened. Like there was
a couple of years after that first investigation when it
became very clear that I was not going to get
to see my nephew grow up. Where I just couldn't
even be in the room with a small child, you know.
So it's so painful. My life carried on. I published,
I got married, I got pregnant, And it really was
(22:48):
around the time that I got pregnant that I started
working on my novel and realized, like, oh, I think
everyone who becomes a parent, whatever your most difficult thing
in your family is like it will come back up.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, sure, And so.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
For sure that came up for me. And I think
it's been really interesting because the bulk of the time
that I've been working on the novel, the podcast, and
this nonfiction book. Some days I think what am I doing?
This is insane, like I've you know, through two pregnancies
now in postpartum periods. But in fact it has been
cathartic and rewarding in a lot of ways. Every time
(23:27):
I talk about what actually happened in my family, that's
always hard, but I think talking to other people who've
been through it, giving people a voice to like come
on the show and talk about their experiences, getting some
of these experts on the air, and just getting that there,
that information out.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
It's huge.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah. I think one of the things that the situation
within my family has really made me feel very helpless.
I don't think the system worked as it should have worked.
That is a very frustrating and helpless feeling. So I
think like feeling like I could do a little something
for the sort of overall cause or talk help make up.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Oh you're doing a lot of something. Tell us about
the nonprofit you co founded called Munchausen Support.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Back in twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty one, I first
started meeting with this committee that's part of the American
Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, which is just
a big umbrella organization that has nurses and teachers and
CPS workers and all kinds of people that just have
anything to do with child abuse. And so they have
a Munchausen Biproxy Committee, which is just a dedicated group
of professionals that works and shares resources. I'm now a
(24:45):
member of that committee and one of my sort of
functions on that committee was to try and help translate
some of this kind of out of this very academic
sphere that it lives in. And so one of the
first things I did was work with doctor Mark Feldman,
who oversaw everything I did on this site, to create
munch House and Support dot com, which is just an
online resource where you can find like warning signs and
(25:08):
information for therapists, information for teachers, for doctors, for CPS workers,
for law enforcement. That's just making some of that really accessible.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
And then we're building on that work now and with
one of my colleagues, b Yorker, who's incredible. She was,
she's been like she was a nurse for thirty years.
She's a lawyer, she was a professor of law. She's
an incredible background in this. And she and our colleague Joe,
who is a survivor themselves, are working on these survivor
support groups and we actually have them for family members
(25:41):
as well. And then we're also working on just getting
some more trainings out there talking to I've talked to
a couple of people actually got in touch because of
the podcast, getting some trainings at their hospital. Even doctors
often don't know that much about this, which is sucks. Yeah, yeah,
it's you would want everyone like.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
To know so that there so if there's any red
flags or Spidey sense that's going off, we have to
protect the child.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, And unfortunately, in a lot of these situations, doctors
really get vilified. I'm sure that is what happened in
the media coverage of my sister's case, that they made
it sound like this doctor was like out of line
somehow to be reporting abuse, which is just insane. I mean, obviously,
like in every state in the country, doctors are mandated reporters.
(26:32):
People should be reporting. But I always worry that kind
of media coverage is going to have a chilling effect.
I think it would be insane to think that it wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Wow, how old your kids now?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
My daughter is four and a half and my son
is ten months old, so they're very Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
My god, there's so little. Okay, so we are no
way shape for near the time yet where you'll have
to be. Have you thought at all about if they
ever asked about your sister or cousin on that side,
like what that would be Like, I have.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Thought about that, and for now that's just a can
I'm kicking down the road.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, yeah, you're got there.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We are years away. You're years away. I think that
it'll just be a matter of, like any difficult thing,
just finding age appropriate ways to to explain that so
that it doesn't sound too scary. But it's like kids
don't actually they think about who's there, they know who's.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
They're never going to know her. It's going to be a.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Long time down the road before they start thinking about, oh,
did you ever have a sister or anything like that. Yeah,
I think it all.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You know, what advice would you give to a parent,
like if they suspect a friend of theirs has MVP.
What would be an appropriate way to recognize and support
them without overstepping any boundaries.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It's really hard, and I can't tell you the number
of messages I've gotten or like people that will just
pull me aside when they see me in real life.
I always want people to remember, I understand how uncomfortable
this is. I understand how horrific it is to think
that someone in your life is doing this. So I
think we just all have to keep in mind, like
what the stakes actually are. If this is happening, you
(28:16):
have to report it. We always recommend to people that
they report it to CPS and law enforcement because it
is a matter for both of those entities. And as
my colleague, Detective Weberre always says, report it to both
and hope that one of them knows what they're doing.
It may go nowhere, but you have to report it
because then at least it will be documented. Right in
(28:38):
the second season, and we did some stuff about what
does it look like when something looks suspicious and it
doesn't turn out to be abuse, right, Like, sometimes more
than one kid in a family has a bunch of
weird health stuff and they realize it's like a genetic thing.
But it's like the only thing that can determine that
is an investigation. And certainly if a whole bunch of
(28:59):
suspicions are piling up over the years and for multiple
different things, then that certainly that's going to be germane
to an investigation whenever one happens.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Everyone listening. If you have any questions that you can
always go to munchausendsupport dot com. You can listen to
Andrea's podcast, which is so so brilliantly called Nobody Should
Believe Me. Andrew has tons of books and in closing,
I just want to know Sinjovi a youngin lighthearted question,
(29:31):
what's one registry item you couldn't live without?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Oh my gosh, I think that are like our number
one thing. So I know you've done. I've listened to
several of your episodes on breastfeeding. Breastfeeding Oh my god,
couldn't do it. The first one could do it throughout
through in the chale after four months with my second one, so.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Mine, well done, not any of it. Who cares, It's
all insane, truly, do.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
What you want, do what you want. But I so
we have we have had formula with both babies, the
baby bread Oh my god, what a miracle. Do you
know what a baby Bresa is? Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, you know, like Breza is an amazing It makes
the formula for you and keeps it up right, touch
a button, correct the correct machine. They're shaking up fucking
powders and mixes and all this. It does it all
for you. So the baby Breza, which is spelled b
r easysy A.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
And as you're coming upon your little ones first birthday.
At the time of this recording, you're older ones fifth birthday.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
She will be five in October.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, what advice would you like to give your children
as they get closer to their next birthdays?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Oh my gosh, I don't know. I just think they're
the most wonderful little people. I just I think it's
so funny, seem like they're so cool.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Well, you're doing the right thing, which is I've got
nothing to teach you. You've got everything to teach me.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, you know. I just I think, like, you know,
the thing that we just always try and emphasize. I
know this sounds cheesy, but like we're really just trying
to like be kind. That's the most important thing. Like
how you treat other people as the thing that matters
the most. It's quite a wild world that we're all
sending our kids into.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
I think everyone listening to this podcast would agree. And
I hope that we're all instilling that in our kids.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
So that's like our only hope.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I know it's so lame, but I'm like, can we
please try to make the world a better place because
we done fucked up.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I will always be proud of my kids. Whatever else
they do, achieve, don't achieve, whatever, as long as they're
like good to other people, You're like, just be like,
be good to the people in your life.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Ye test, Yeah, and last question, finish this sentence. Parenthood
is a wild ride, truly. Thank you so much, Andrea
Dunlop for coming on Katie's Crib. I really appreciate you
opening up our eyes and our ears and our experiences
to this horrible thing that has so closely affected you
and your family. Please everyone listen to Andrew's podcast, Her
(31:56):
Books Her, My gosh, You've so much going on, and
I can't believe almost fell over when you were like,
here's all the books I've written in the podcast I
host and everything I do, and I have a ten
month old and a freaking almost five year old. Bravadio,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Necessarily recommend it. I got a whole bunch of deals
went through right after I got pregnant. That is not
the timing I would have missed.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Wow, good for you. Thank you so much for coming
on Katie's Crib. It was a real pleasure and I
learned a ton today.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Thank you, Thank you, Katie.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.
I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns.
Let me know. You can always find me at Katie'scrib
at Shondaland dot com. Katie's Crib is a production of
Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(32:56):
you listen to your favorite shows. Oh my st
Welcome to Katie's crib a production of Shondaland Audio in
partnership with iHeartRadio. What advice would you give to a parent, like,
if they suspect a friend of theirs has MVP, what
would be an appropriate way to recognize and support them
without overstepping any boundaries.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I understand how uncomfortable this is. I understand how terific
it is to think that someone in your life is
doing this. So I think we just all have to
keep in mind, like what the stakes actually are. If
this is happening, you have to report it. We always
recommend to people that they report it to CPS and
law enforcement because it is a matter for both of
(00:41):
those entities. And as my colleague, Detective Weber always says,
report it to both and hope that one of them
knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Katie's CRIBB. How'd you like
that intro? You're getting a really chill Katie today, isn't
that interesting? And I got a great night sleep last night.
That's not the norm at all. I think it's like
my body's in full on preparation because I'm about to
embark on a whole bunch of days where I don't
(01:16):
have any childcare support. Adam is super busy in pretzel Land.
My parents aren't here, my nanny isn't here, et cetera, etc.
So it's like I'm in the calm before the shit storm. People.
I'm really excited about today's episode. It's probably one of
the most interesting Katie's Crib episodes we've ever done. I
(01:37):
didn't know much about the topic. I've done a ton
of research in prep all for our guest today, who
goes by the name Andrea Dunlop. Andrea is amazing. She
is an author, she is a consultant, She is a
podcast host herself, and she is coming on the pod
today to talk all about something called Munchausen by Proxy
(01:58):
and what her personal connection is to the topic. Her
previous novels include Losing the Light, She Regrets Nothing, We
Came here to Forget, Broken Bay, and her most recent one,
Women Are the Fiercest Creatures. Andrea is the host, like
I mentioned, of a true crime podcast called Nobody Should
Believe Me, and the show is dedicated to stories about
(02:20):
Munchausen by Proxy, and she talks about what her experience
was like working closely with people that have been through
such a painful situation. She's also the co creator of
Munchausen Support, which is a nonprofit dedicated to providing resources
for frontline professionals, families, and survivors dealing with Munchausen by proxy.
Andrea lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and her
(02:42):
two children, Fiona and Column Welcome to Katie's Crib. Andrea, Hi,
Andrea Hi. It's such a pleasure to meet you.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Oh so nice to meet you too.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Thank you for sending me so many books. I'm so
impressed by the amount of things you have written. Our
listeners are all cut up in the know from our
intro to today's episode of How Impressive You Are. Munchausen
by proxy is something that a lot of people don't
know about, other than like the things they might have
(03:20):
seen in movies. You know a few storylines here and there.
Can you explain to our audience what exactly Munchausen bi
proxy is?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yes, and thank you, Thank you so much for having
me on, Katie. Is such a pleasure to be here
with you. So munchhause On bi proxy is the criminal
act of exaggerating, inducing, or fabricating illness in your child Munchausen,
which is called the official DSM. That's basically when when
someone does those same things themselves, so again exaggerating, inducing
(03:53):
or fabricating an illness in yourself for the purposes of
sympathy and attention. Munchausen by proxy is the word I
use the most because that's the one people are familiar with,
if they're familiar with it at all, right, But then
I think that also adds to a lot of the
sort of confusion and mystery around the topic. They are
pretty closely related. But of course, wow, Munchausen biproxy is
(04:14):
especially important because it involves abuse of a child, whereas
Munchausen does not.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
And when you have Munchausen or Munchausen by proxy, do
they know what they're doing or is it different case
by case.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
That's a great question, because it's a really important point.
So Munchausen and Munchausen bi proxy are characterized by intentional deception,
you know, in the case of parents, like there are
some parents that may take their kid to the doctor
too much because they're anxious. Obviously, you and I are
both moms, especially like first time moms those things are
just in a different bucket, right, and much easier to
(04:51):
deal with, because then if the mom just really needs
some help, or even something really serious like postpartum psychosis,
then it's a question of okay, this needs help. They
are not intentionally harming their children with these offenders, And
again with those munch house and behaviors that we're talking about,
they understand what they're doing, they understand right from wrong.
(05:12):
In a criminal context, that's a really important distinction because
I think that people get very caught up in these
cases with what's going on mentally with the mother, and
I think that's just because it's so hard to wrap
your head around this behavior. And I would argue that
we should also be treating offenders when appropriate, But of
course you always have to be looking out for the
(05:33):
well being of the children. And so when you're doing
these investigations into this, what they're looking for is again
intentional deception, when someone is lying about what's in the
previous record, or inventing things where their child has tested
negative for something and then they go to another doctor
and say they tested positive for it. So that kind
of thing god again very different than like someone seeking
(05:55):
a second opinion, or someone who just has a child
that has a medical a bit of medical mystery thing, right,
I mean, of course that happens.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
How can you identify if someone has Munchausen by proxy?
Is it just like it's like the intent is different.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I've become very convinced talking to experts that I think
we should be aware of like the warning signs. And
then also warning signs are not evidence. So the only
way that you can determine whether or not abuse has
occurred is to do an investigation that should be both
a CPS investigation and a criminal investigation, because CPS and
(06:33):
law enforcement, you know, they have two really different jobs.
This is something I've learned a lot about that's actually
been really fascinating for me. I think for parents, like
CPS is this sort.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Of looming that's child protective Service? Sorry, child Protective Service? No, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's good.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So CPS's job is to determine whether or not a
child is safe in the home, right, so not to
determine whether or not a crime has been committed. Law
enforcement is determining whether a crime has been committed. So
child abuse is of course a crime, and so really
the only way that you can figure out whether this
has been committed is to have someone do a full
medical record review. So again looking for those discrepancies, those
(07:10):
kinds of discrepancies that I mentioned, sort of someone going
to a bunch of different doctors and telling those doctors
different things. We see a lot of like parents interfering
with tests.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
This is wild. Yeah, and okay, I'm interrupting. Okay, So
what are the things that so parents can fake something?
They can like you said, go to one doctor, go
to another doctor, lie and said something came out positive,
that was negative. They're actually meddling with medical information.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
So when you take your child to the pediatrician, what
does that look like? You bring them in there and
the pediatrician says, mom, what's going on with your child? Right?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Everything normal? We have normal peeps, We have normal poos.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
How are they eating?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
How are they eating?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
How are they sleeping? Yeah? Are there any other problems?
So I think that sometimes this gets mischaracterized as something
that can only be pulled off by this sort of
manipulative mastermind type of person, but in fact, it's unfortunately
very easy to commit. So doctors and pediatricians are trained
(08:15):
to take the word of their patients. And that's as
it should be, right because, of course, most parents would
never lie to a doctor about what's going on with
their child, especially some of these things we see in
babies and younger children. It's just as simple as a
mom going in and saying, oh, my child's just not
gaining weight and I don't know why. And then you
have these progressive interventions of first they put them on
(08:37):
one kind of feeding tube, and then they put them
on a surgical feeding tube and have all of these
interventions because they can't figure out why the child is
not gaining weight. And then the reason the child is
not gaining weight is because the mother is not feeding
that child. But a doctor sitting in an office with
a mother would never know that from a ten minute conversation.
That's the kind of thing that happens in these cases.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Wow, okay, tell us a little bit about your sister please,
and your own personal relationship to Munchausen by proxy.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, So starting off with some very important disclaimers. My
sister has not been charged with a crime. She has
been investigated twice. We have not been in touch with
each other for about twelve years now. My family and
I fell out. She cut us out of her lives
after the first investigation. So that is how I learned
(09:30):
about this. That's where I come to it. I had
these experiences with her before her children were born, where
she had some of these again Munchhaus and behaviors. Right. So,
the most notable of being she had said she was
pregnant with twins and lost them about six months in.
I completely thought she was really pregnant and it, however,
(09:50):
it all sort of unraveled. She did not lose that
pregnancy when she said she did. It's very much our suspicion,
collective suspicion that she was never pregnant at all. That
was the most alarming instance of lying about something about
her health. There were others. She shaved part of her
head in high school and said she was losing her hair,
and so that pattern had been going on for a
long time. It was just this thing that would come
(10:13):
in and out a bit. And then after her first
child was born, that's when we got really scared in
because we had those fears. She really cut us out
of her life.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
What was she doing to her first kid that set
off the alarms? Before you were cut out of her life,
did you have personal experience of things that you saw
that she was doing. Obviously she had a pattern growing
up for whatever reason, and now she has a kid
and it transfers on to this child.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, And of course, like I want to put all
the caveats because I want to say first of all,
that I do have a lot of documentation of a
lot of things, So I'll just say that that first off.
But yeah, I'm not a mental health professional. I'm not
going to diagnose my sister with anything. I can only
sort of say what we observed and what we were told.
So her son was born a couple of months. Early
(11:06):
premies are, I've come to learn, extremely common in these cases.
Now I will say too that, like anything that I mentioned,
whether it's eating issues, premies, cistic fibrosis, just because we
see a lot of them in these cases does not
mean that we should be looking upon parents who have premies.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, like, oh my gosh, you were a premature labor
correct prox.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
It's not a causal relationship that way. In fact, doctor
Mark Feldman, who's one of the top experts in the
country who I've gotten really close with. He has a book,
Dying to Be Ill, that profiles a bunch of people
who have much house and munch as of by proxy,
and he had a couple of perpetrators actually tell him
how they induced premature labor. He was born premature and
then had this failure to thrive thing happening. He was
(11:51):
just having trouble gaining weight. We were concerned because it
was progressing towards getting a GET tube, which is the
surgically placed tube. My parents went to my family doctor,
who had been our family doctor for like one hundred years,
and really at that point, we didn't know anything. We
(12:13):
didn't know the definition of this. We didn't know this
was really a thing. Just was like a bad gut feeling,
specifically because of the previous fake pregnancy and all that
sort of lead up. And so she was the one
who gave us that term, and she suggested that my
mom speak to my sisters, her son's pediatrician. My mom
(12:33):
went and did that, and we didn't know what was
going to happen after that. What happened was CPS did
an emergency removal. We did not know CPS was going
to be called. You don't know if you've never had
until you know a golement, right, if you've never been
in that situation where like CPS gets called, then you
have no idea what to expect, and it was very scary,
and we really tried to sort of like maintain that
(12:56):
contact with her, and my parents were just beside themselves.
They didn't know what to do. That investigation really came
to nothing. There was a CPS investigation, the state did
not make any attempts to take custody of her children.
It sort of just fizzled out.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Did he end up getting the tube? Did it go
down that track?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I believe not. Unfortunately, CPS revealed to my sister that
my mother had made that call, which they're not supposed
to do. You're supposed to be able to anonymously report
to CPS. And again, of course she didn't report to CPS.
She talked to the doctor. They revealed that information to it.
So it put sort of an immediate division in my
family of I can't believe you would ever think I
would do this, And if you're not with me, you're
(13:39):
against then you're dead to me, right, Yes, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You mentioned in a previous interview in Vanity Fair that
your nephew the one we're speaking of. I'm assuming it's
this one, not her second child spent years suffering from
a series of medical ailments. So if you've been out
of touch, have you been able to find out anything
since then? How did you find out that there was
a CPS investigation a second time that she definitely was
in charge all of that.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
We found out about the second investigation because a police
detective called us. So that was several years ago, and
that was with her daughter. That investigation went from twenty
eighteen to twenty twenty. Law enforcement was not involved for
the first time, so the second time, law enforcement was involved.
When law enforcement gets involved in a case like this,
one of the things they do is all of these
collateral interviews, right, So they're looking to talk to family members,
(14:26):
talk to the school teachers, any medical professionals treating the child,
anything like that. Obviously, we did not have information about
her daughter because we had never met her daughter, but
we'd heard things here and there over the years. She's
not in touch with anyone from my extended family anymore.
She's out of touch with all of her friends that
she grew up with. But we did find out things
(14:47):
here and there that she put on social media. She
had another baby that was born very premature and did
not make it. She posted a picture of that on
social media, so we heard about that. Her daughter, than
the one that she was investigated for, was born again
very premature, so I think at about twenty four weeks, which,
(15:07):
having been through a pregnancy, you'll know, that's very little
so early.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
That's like six months right right at the sort of
right at the is it a viable pregnancy at all?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah? Oh wow. The hospital that was treating her daughter
posted like something on their care page about her, and
a relative sent it to us. But really, we got
this call from this police detective and then again they're
not able to tell you that much about the investigation,
but we just filled him in on our previous concerns
and some of these previous events. Also, my sister was
(15:38):
in the media, so she called up a reporter who
was doing a series on what he has characterized as
falsely accused mothers. I sort of know bits and pieces
I get, I guess is the answer.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Wow, And we just really don't know if your niece
or nephew are thriving, if they're okay, if they're safe.
My goodness, Now in your work, since this has so
(16:14):
personally affected you, and your family because of her disease,
which I guess she's never been technically diagnosed.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Well, yeah, and I do. I do want to make
sure to put that caveat in now. Like everything I'm saying,
this is information that's in the public record, it's accessible.
No one gets diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy in the
absence of being charged with a crime. Right. So even
the famous case of our era, the Deiti Blanchard case, right,
the Gypsy Rose case, the only one anyone's heard of,
(16:44):
if they have heard of this at all, she was
never charged with a crime, and she was never diagnosed
with Munchausen by proxy. Right, So it's not something that
someone goes I'm having these tris now. I wish it was.
I wish it was right where if someone was having
right thoughts, having intrusive thoughts, they could go and seek help.
Even another pretty famous modern era case is the Lacy
Spears case. And she unfortunately killed her little boy, and
(17:08):
she was sitting in prison for it and still said
she didn't do it. It's not something where people take accountability
for it.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Like, you're not going you're not seeking to be diagnosed,
you're not seeking to be fixed, or you think nothing's
wrong and that this is normal.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Correct, it's characterized by deception.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
What has surprised you the most from the stories you've
heard in learning from other MBP survivors.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, certainly the similarities and the patterns are very strong.
So a lot of the feeding issues. Also a lot
of seizure disorders, allegedly so seizures that no one else
is witnessing. It's just an incredibly strong pattern. So I
think that has been very surprising to think, like, oh,
you have this very weird case if you look at
it in isolation, but then if you look at it
(17:56):
next to a bunch of other cases, they sort of
all look the same. And then I think the revelation
that most of the experts that I've talked to have said,
this is probably about as common as any other form
of child abuse. Not every other family on the block.
We all know somebody who we all have some sort
of tangential experience with, like childhood sex abuse, right like,
very few of us are going to go through our
(18:16):
life never meeting someone that was the survivor. And it's
the same with this and that that's what the experts believe,
and certainly my anecdotal experience having had the podcast out
and hearing from a lot of people would lead me
to believe that is true.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Also, wow, when you look back, is it like memento
where you're like, you look back on her life and
what she was like as a child, and you were like,
oh my god, Like this has always been there. There
was Munchausen.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I don't really. There's certainly things like once we were teenagers,
like that thing with the hair and then the pregnancies,
but I had a really nice childhood with her, like
and that's one of the hardest things to square. And
it was really beautiful for me to get to meet
Hope you bar as siblings because we had a lot
of those same experiences where we just think my relationship
with this person ended in a really sad way. But
(19:09):
I still have all of these memories of them growing
up and they were a part of my family. I
think of it at this point as like a death, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And so it's very hard to reconcile. Though this is
a long time ago that this happened, there was a
really long time that I was grieving losing that relationship.
That's still hard some days.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
The cases that you've quoted talked about so far in
this episode. Do you think you could run us through quick?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah? So the Hope You bar case is the one
that we profiled in season one of my podcasts. We
interviewed her, which was that was a very fascinating experience
to sit down with her. So she is a woman
who spent ten years in prison for abuse of her
youngest child. The charges related to taking blood out of
her daughter via a central line that was one that
(19:59):
involved a fake cystic fibrosis diagnosis, and she poisoned her daughter.
So that yeah, these cases are very disturbing, but the
good news is in that one her daughter, I believe
just recently turned eighteen. Her and her other two kids,
they have a great dad and wonderful supportive family. So they,
(20:19):
as far as I know, are really thriving and did
really well. And I think that is a that's a
good story. That's a story of an intervention that went
in a positive direction. Well. Yeah, the other case that
I mentioned Lacey Spears, that was someone who killed her
four year old little boy via salt poisoning. She did
(20:40):
spend some time in prison. I believe she's out now,
and I believe her family stuck by her. It's very
interesting to me to see how which way the family
goes in a lot of these cases, because I've seen
a lot of family members that do stand by the
perpetrator and say she could never do this, she would
never do this, regardless of what evidence is put in
front of them. I think that's something I've really learned
(21:00):
in this process is that, like, people don't make decisions
about what they believe based on evidence the way that
we think they do right.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
No, they make but on how they feel right exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Their emotional truth. And like emotional is very strong, and
like the resistance to the idea that a mother could
do this, especially a mother who seems loving and loving
is not acting in any way that seems psychologically abnormal.
It's very disturbing to think that you could just have
this like lovely, nice mom next door, and then she's
(21:35):
doing this in her secret life. The other case that
is one that probably more people know about than any
other one is the Dede Blanchard case, which was fictionalized
on that show The Act, and then there's also a
great HBO documentary.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Pole were obsessed with it.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yes, Joey King, Yeah, purcha shark Cat played TV Blanchard,
and so that is that is a very wild case.
That is one in which the victim actually conspired with
an internet boyfriend to murder her mother. Gipsy is in jail,
I think for maybe like one more year and then
she will be out on parole. But that sort of
has an extra element of wildness because of the murder.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Wow, how has your personal experience with your sister and
munch House in my proxy influenced you in raising your
own children?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, that's a great question. There was a long period
of my life where I didn't want to think about
any of those events that had happened. Like there was
a couple of years after that first investigation when it
became very clear that I was not going to get
to see my nephew grow up. Where I just couldn't
even be in the room with a small child, you know.
So it's so painful. My life carried on. I published,
I got married, I got pregnant, And it really was
(22:48):
around the time that I got pregnant that I started
working on my novel and realized, like, oh, I think
everyone who becomes a parent, whatever your most difficult thing
in your family is like it will come back up.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, sure, And so.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
For sure that came up for me. And I think
it's been really interesting because the bulk of the time
that I've been working on the novel, the podcast, and
this nonfiction book. Some days I think what am I doing?
This is insane, like I've you know, through two pregnancies
now in postpartum periods. But in fact it has been
cathartic and rewarding in a lot of ways. Every time
(23:27):
I talk about what actually happened in my family, that's
always hard, but I think talking to other people who've
been through it, giving people a voice to like come
on the show and talk about their experiences, getting some
of these experts on the air, and just getting that there,
that information out.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
It's huge.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah. I think one of the things that the situation
within my family has really made me feel very helpless.
I don't think the system worked as it should have worked.
That is a very frustrating and helpless feeling. So I
think like feeling like I could do a little something
for the sort of overall cause or talk help make up.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Oh you're doing a lot of something. Tell us about
the nonprofit you co founded called Munchausen Support.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Back in twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty one, I first
started meeting with this committee that's part of the American
Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, which is just
a big umbrella organization that has nurses and teachers and
CPS workers and all kinds of people that just have
anything to do with child abuse. And so they have
a Munchausen Biproxy Committee, which is just a dedicated group
of professionals that works and shares resources. I'm now a
(24:45):
member of that committee and one of my sort of
functions on that committee was to try and help translate
some of this kind of out of this very academic
sphere that it lives in. And so one of the
first things I did was work with doctor Mark Feldman,
who oversaw everything I did on this site, to create
munch House and Support dot com, which is just an
online resource where you can find like warning signs and
(25:08):
information for therapists, information for teachers, for doctors, for CPS workers,
for law enforcement. That's just making some of that really accessible.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
And then we're building on that work now and with
one of my colleagues, b Yorker, who's incredible. She was,
she's been like she was a nurse for thirty years.
She's a lawyer, she was a professor of law. She's
an incredible background in this. And she and our colleague Joe,
who is a survivor themselves, are working on these survivor
support groups and we actually have them for family members
(25:41):
as well. And then we're also working on just getting
some more trainings out there talking to I've talked to
a couple of people actually got in touch because of
the podcast, getting some trainings at their hospital. Even doctors
often don't know that much about this, which is sucks. Yeah, yeah,
it's you would want everyone like.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
To know so that there so if there's any red
flags or Spidey sense that's going off, we have to
protect the child.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, And unfortunately, in a lot of these situations, doctors
really get vilified. I'm sure that is what happened in
the media coverage of my sister's case, that they made
it sound like this doctor was like out of line
somehow to be reporting abuse, which is just insane. I mean, obviously,
like in every state in the country, doctors are mandated reporters.
(26:32):
People should be reporting. But I always worry that kind
of media coverage is going to have a chilling effect.
I think it would be insane to think that it wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Wow, how old your kids now?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
My daughter is four and a half and my son
is ten months old, so they're very Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
My god, there's so little. Okay, so we are no
way shape for near the time yet where you'll have
to be. Have you thought at all about if they
ever asked about your sister or cousin on that side,
like what that would be Like, I have.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Thought about that, and for now that's just a can
I'm kicking down the road.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, yeah, you're got there.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We are years away. You're years away. I think that
it'll just be a matter of, like any difficult thing,
just finding age appropriate ways to to explain that so
that it doesn't sound too scary. But it's like kids
don't actually they think about who's there, they know who's.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
They're never going to know her. It's going to be a.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Long time down the road before they start thinking about, oh,
did you ever have a sister or anything like that. Yeah,
I think it all.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You know, what advice would you give to a parent,
like if they suspect a friend of theirs has MVP.
What would be an appropriate way to recognize and support
them without overstepping any boundaries.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It's really hard, and I can't tell you the number
of messages I've gotten or like people that will just
pull me aside when they see me in real life.
I always want people to remember, I understand how uncomfortable
this is. I understand how horrific it is to think
that someone in your life is doing this. So I
think we just all have to keep in mind, like
what the stakes actually are. If this is happening, you
(28:16):
have to report it. We always recommend to people that
they report it to CPS and law enforcement because it
is a matter for both of those entities. And as
my colleague, Detective Weberre always says, report it to both
and hope that one of them knows what they're doing.
It may go nowhere, but you have to report it
because then at least it will be documented. Right in
(28:38):
the second season, and we did some stuff about what
does it look like when something looks suspicious and it
doesn't turn out to be abuse, right, Like, sometimes more
than one kid in a family has a bunch of
weird health stuff and they realize it's like a genetic thing.
But it's like the only thing that can determine that
is an investigation. And certainly if a whole bunch of
(28:59):
suspicions are piling up over the years and for multiple
different things, then that certainly that's going to be germane
to an investigation whenever one happens.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Everyone listening. If you have any questions that you can
always go to munchausendsupport dot com. You can listen to
Andrea's podcast, which is so so brilliantly called Nobody Should
Believe Me. Andrew has tons of books and in closing,
I just want to know Sinjovi a youngin lighthearted question,
(29:31):
what's one registry item you couldn't live without?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Oh my gosh, I think that are like our number
one thing. So I know you've done. I've listened to
several of your episodes on breastfeeding. Breastfeeding Oh my god,
couldn't do it. The first one could do it throughout
through in the chale after four months with my second one, so.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Mine, well done, not any of it. Who cares, It's
all insane, truly, do.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
What you want, do what you want. But I so
we have we have had formula with both babies, the
baby bread Oh my god, what a miracle. Do you
know what a baby Bresa is? Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, you know, like Breza is an amazing It makes
the formula for you and keeps it up right, touch
a button, correct the correct machine. They're shaking up fucking
powders and mixes and all this. It does it all
for you. So the baby Breza, which is spelled b
r easysy A.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
And as you're coming upon your little ones first birthday.
At the time of this recording, you're older ones fifth birthday.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
She will be five in October.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, what advice would you like to give your children
as they get closer to their next birthdays?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Oh my gosh, I don't know. I just think they're
the most wonderful little people. I just I think it's
so funny, seem like they're so cool.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Well, you're doing the right thing, which is I've got
nothing to teach you. You've got everything to teach me.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, you know. I just I think, like, you know,
the thing that we just always try and emphasize. I
know this sounds cheesy, but like we're really just trying
to like be kind. That's the most important thing. Like
how you treat other people as the thing that matters
the most. It's quite a wild world that we're all
sending our kids into.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
I think everyone listening to this podcast would agree. And
I hope that we're all instilling that in our kids.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
So that's like our only hope.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I know it's so lame, but I'm like, can we
please try to make the world a better place because
we done fucked up.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I will always be proud of my kids. Whatever else
they do, achieve, don't achieve, whatever, as long as they're
like good to other people, You're like, just be like,
be good to the people in your life.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Ye test, Yeah, and last question, finish this sentence. Parenthood
is a wild ride, truly. Thank you so much, Andrea
Dunlop for coming on Katie's Crib. I really appreciate you
opening up our eyes and our ears and our experiences
to this horrible thing that has so closely affected you
and your family. Please everyone listen to Andrew's podcast, Her
(31:56):
Books Her, My gosh, You've so much going on, and
I can't believe almost fell over when you were like,
here's all the books I've written in the podcast I
host and everything I do, and I have a ten
month old and a freaking almost five year old. Bravadio,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Necessarily recommend it. I got a whole bunch of deals
went through right after I got pregnant. That is not
the timing I would have missed.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Wow, good for you. Thank you so much for coming
on Katie's Crib. It was a real pleasure and I
learned a ton today.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Thank you, Thank you, Katie.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.
I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns.
Let me know. You can always find me at Katie'scrib
at Shondaland dot com. Katie's Crib is a production of
Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(32:56):
you listen to your favorite shows. Oh my st
Popular Podcasts
1. Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.