Nobody Should Believe Me - S07 E01: The Catalyst

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Welcome to Season Seven of Nobody Should Believe Me. Andrea revisits the case of Maya Kowalski—the story at the center of the Netflix film Take Care of Maya–and the family’s high-profile lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. What became widely framed as a story about “medical kidnapping” began when hospital staff reported suspected medical child abuse after Maya arrived with a history of extreme ketamine treatments.  How did a case of horrific abuse become a story about evil doctors kidnapping children? Featuring: Ethen Shapiro, Attorney for Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital *** Listen to our 4-part recap of the Kowalski Case: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revisiting-kowalski-part-one-the-turn/id1615637188?i=1000750439578 Listen to our season 3 coverage of the Kowalski Case: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s03-e01-special-report-watching-take-care-of-maya-re-release/id1615637188 Listen to Andrea and Dr. Bex’s coverage of the Kowalski v Johns Hopkins Trial: https://www.patreon.com/collection/548199 Try out Andrea’s Podcaster Coaching App: https://studio.com/apps/andrea/podcaster Order Andrea’s book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy: https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-mother-next-door-9781250284273/ View our sponsors: https://www.nobodyshouldbelieveme.com/sponsors/ Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show!   Subscribe on YouTube where we have bonus content: https://www.youtube.com/@NobodyShouldBelieveMePod Follow Andrea on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreadunlop/ Buy Andrea's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrea-Dunlop/author/B005VFWJPI For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit: https://www.munchausensupport.com/ The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines: https://apsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Munchausen-by-Proxy-Clinical-and-Case-Management-Guidance-.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

True Story Media Please note that this show discusses child abuse, which may be difficult for some listeners. For resources about abusive head trauma, go to shakenbaby.org. Take care of Maya trial. New details as well, and the take care of Maya trial.

Well, Maya Kowalski and her family have waited out five years to hear a verdict in their $220 million lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital. into the conduct of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital. In fact, are Maya Kowalski. What happened to Maya? That was the question posed by Diane Neri

in her viral feature for New York Magazine that ran in the fall of 2022. There was that headline, along with a close-up of Maya Kowalski's eyes. I remember reading this article long before I'd end up reading thousands of pages of court documents, medical records, testimony, and police records about the case, and thinking, I don't think this reporter understands what actually happened here. And then, of course, there was the Netflix film.

No matter what we did, the court sided with the hospital staff. Judges don't care about evidence. You don't get to the truth by accepting what's in front of you without questioning it. And I realized that this was a lot bigger than just the Kowalski's. How many times are you allowed to be wrong and destroy lives before they say, okay, that's enough? These families walked in, hoping for help for their child, and some of them walked out in handcuffs. And this was followed by a high-profile court battle.

Nobody should believe me had been on the air for about a year at this point. And this was the biggest story about Munchausen by proxy since Gypsy Rose Blanchard. So I felt like I needed to address it. I pulled in some experts for a roundtable discussion about the film. My impressions were it was a huge opportunity lost. What they could have done is looked at the actual issues in this abuse. They could have looked at, you know, in this case there was a... And that was all I originally planned to do.

But everyone else just kept getting it so wrong. But it is not the person who's doing the medical record review his job to interview every doctor. It's to look through those records. And that is how you put one of those... How do you get that? Why do you believe that that's the case? If she is making her, if she is the sole person making the recommendation to the judge, the judge is relying on her. But she's not, she was not the sole person. She was not the sole person. I'm sorry.

There was there was affidavits and testimony from numerous other doctors in the court. What actually happened to Maya Kowalski is that she was the victim of extremely well-documented Munchausen by proxy abuse. In the year preceding her fateful hospitalization at Johns Hopkins All Children's, Maya Kowalski was subjected to 55 infusions of ketamine, a powerful drug that can cause hallucinations, memory loss, and bladder issues, among other side effects. Her treatment course also included a highly experimental five-day ketamine coma in Mexico. Dr. Fernando Cantu, who performed the treatment, told Maya's parents that the procedure had a 50% percent chance of death.

Maya was pulled from school, wheelchair bound, and dangerously underweight. Her mother, Biotta Kowalski, an infusion nurse by trade, administered ketamine, dilauded, and other drugs orally, intramuscularly, and into Maya's port at home, often against doctor's orders. Bia talked online and elsewhere about Maya's impending death and pushed to get her daughter labeled as terminal and attempted to seek out hospice care, despite the fact that complex regional pain syndrome isn't a terminal diagnosis. And that diagnosis was handed out to Maya by a dubious doctor after three world-class hospitals diagnosed her with conversion disorder.

On October 7, 2016, when Maya was hospitalized with reports of excruciating pain, Biotta told staff at Johns Hopkins All-Childrens that if they refused to administer the unheard-of-amount of ketamine she was requesting, that they, quote, might as well consult hospice so she can finally get enough medication and just let her die. So how did such a clear and obviously life-threatening case of abuse get twisted into a story about evil doctors kidnapping a child? What was going on here? Once I started pulling at this thread, I couldn't stop. The case and the civil trial consumed my life for months. We just recapped this case in a miniseries, by the way, if you don't have time to listen to the previous

18 episodes I made about this. I ended up covering the trial as it unfolded over eight weeks, ending in a jury awarding the Kowalski's $261 million. And two years later, the story continues to unfold. Late last year, a Florida appeals court vacated the verdict,

and the Kowalski's request to reconsider the appeal decision was denied. And as all this has been playing out in court, the impact of Kowalski v. Johns Hopkins has been felt far and wide. because as reporter Daphne Chen said in the trailer you just heard, this has always been bigger than just the Kowalski's.

Kowalski lit the match, and no matter what ultimately happens in their court battle, the fire won't easily be contained. People believe their eyes. That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. If we didn't, you could never make it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop.

Welcome to Season 7 of Nobody Should Believe Me. A reminder that if you want to listen to the first six episodes of season seven ad-free, you can do so by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Patreon. You'll also get two bonus episodes a month as a subscriber. This month, Dr. Beck's and I are sharing some big updates on Kowalski v. Johns Hopkins and re-watching Take Care of Maya so that you don't have to. If financial support is not an option, we'd love it if you could rate and review the show wherever you're listening or share it with a friend or two or five. Nobody should believe me is a

proudly independent production. We're only here because of you. So thanks for listening. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help when you need it so your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive dot com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. The Kowalski's legal battle had already been going on for years by the time the story got traction

in the media. Jack Kowalski filed his original lawsuit in October of 2018, two years almost to the day after Maya was originally hospitalized with the defendant, Johns Hopkins All Children's. So the original lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital brought by the Kowalski family alleged a lot of things, some of which were dismissed before trial. The original lawsuit brought claims for everything from malicious prosecution for the hospital and their health care providers calling the Department of Children and Family Services. reporting suspicions of medical child abuse and neglect. We spoke to Ethan Shapiro, an attorney for Johns Hopkins All Children's,

about how this court case and its aftermath have played out. The counts that survived included everything from medical malpractice for the alleged misdiagnosis of medical child abuse, the alleged failure to give what we consider to be extreme doses of ketamine and other dangerous drugs. There were allegations of drugs. battery and there were allegations of intentional infliction of emotional distress, some of which the family alleged caused the mother to commit suicide.

As you saw from the appellate court ruling, the appellate court sided with my client, Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, ultimately finding that the hospital complied in good faith with the mandatory protection statutes and were not liable for as a matter of law or as a matter a fact for the unfortunate death of Mrs. Kowalski. There were two possible far-reaching issues with the Kowalski verdict had it withstood appeal. One is the potential legal precedent set by allowing a family to claim damages against an institution for a suicide, and the other, of course, was holding the hospital liable for reporting abuse.

The attempts to hold health care providers liable for mandatory reporting under Chapter 39 are rare but not unheard of. In fact, if you looked at the published decisions, a lot of them are for the flip side, where, you know, for example, a parent whose child was ultimately abused or harmed is suing a state agency or a mandatory reporter for failing to report suspected abuse.

Think, for example, you know, in a case of a contested divorce where a child reports symptoms of sexual abuse to a teacher and the teacher doesn't bring that forward. You could see a situation where the other custodial parent finds out about that and then would have a lawsuit or potential prosecution against a mandatory reporter. Now, all of that being said, we've seen a spate of these lawsuits more in frequency since the Kowalski case, since the movie, and since the fact that it survived, the initial motions to dismiss based on statutory immunity. How often do we see these types of cases go to trial incredibly rare? And I think they're going to become more rare now that the Second District Court of Appeal

has reaffirmed statutory rights and immunities for mandatory reporters. The Kowalski lawsuit and its imitators positioned this legal battle very clearly as a parent's rights issue, claiming that, quote, Dr. Smith and Johns Hopkins All Children's, knowingly and recklessly violated Jack and Biata's constitutional right to make medical decisions for their child by refusing to discharge Maya following repeated requests from Jack and Biata and by conspiring to abuse a process and legislative provisions designed to protect children from imminent harm. And while some of the counts of the lawsuit, such as conspiracy, malicious prosecution, and the First and Fourteenth Amendment claims were dismissed before trial,

the spirit of these claims remained. The plaintiff's story was that the doctors had conspired to separate Maya from her mother. They'd known their abuse claims were fake and they made them anyway. And their wanton disregard for this family had driven Biotta Kowalski to take her own life. And these claims have served as inspiration for a number of other lawsuits around the country against child abuse pediatricians and hospitals, from San Diego to Minnesota to Pennsylvania. According to these lawsuits, doctors aren't just making mistakes. They're all powerful entities who are conspired.

to remove children from their innocent parents for their own financial gain and career advancement. The terminology varies depending on the venue, but there is in fact a name for all of this, medical kidnapping. Like any other conspiracy theory, it's hard to trace the exact origins of the term medical kidnapping, but it appears to have gained a foothold in parents' rights-focused internet spaces sometime in the 2010s and gained significant traction during the highly publicized Justina Pelletier case, a precursor lawsuit involving Munchausen by proxy. Medical kidnapping is deeply entwined with the idea that Munchausen by proxy isn't a real form of abuse, that every allegation is necessarily false, a witch hunt against caring moms,

and that CPS workers and physicians are hiding behind their legal immunity protections. This concept has even deeper Internet origins than medical kidnapping itself, going back to the Mothers Against Munchausen allegations website, which popped up in the late 90s. medical kidnapping, like so many things, is a fringe idea that has migrated from the dark corners of the internet into mainstream publications, such as the New York Times and ProPublica. People magazine, where take care of Maya producer Caitlin Keating worked when she discovered this story, published an article in November of 2025 titled, Where is Maya Kowalski now, all about her life after getting medically kidnapped 10 years ago? This was weeks after the verdict was reversed. So how did we get here? And how did hospitals become such a target? So hospitals are in a very unique situation for children that are at risk for suspicions of neglect or abuse. Because often health care workers are the frontline defense and being able to diagnose it and being able to report it.

If you think of a situation where a child would come into a hospital with an unexplained fracture that couldn't be a result of anything other than trauma, and potentially trauma in an area that couldn't be explained in the absence of intentional abuse, the health care worker would be the one that would be in the best position to make that call of reasonable suspicion to the Department of Children and Families. Now, in that unique situation where the child's an inpatient in the hospital already, the easiest thing for the courts to do to try to find an immediate safe placement for the child before the court can figure out whether one of the custodial parents, or perhaps a grandparent or a relative could be, fill in that rule, is to shelter the child immediately at the hospital. So hospitals are put in sort of a precarious position that other

mandatory reporters don't have to deal with. Think firefighters, teachers, in some states, journalists are never going to be in the situation that the person making the report may also to be the person required by order of the court to provide safe shelter to the child in the short and the medium term. And does a hospital, once a child is sheltered there, does a hospital have any choice about whether or not to keep that there under the law? No. The hospital is required to follow the court order, just as anyone would be required to follow

the court order. Now the hospital can make recommendations as to what they believe is. in the best interest of the child from a medical standpoint for whatever medical treatment is necessary. And if you remember back to the Kualski case, once all children's reasonably believed that Maya would have benefited from intensive inpatient or outpatient psychotherapy to treat whatever her pain syndrome was, they made a recommendation to transfer to Nemours Hospital in Orlando who are experts in that. So they can make recommendations, but absent an organization from the court, releasing the jurisdiction the hospital has to keep the child in custody.

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True story, I was just perusing the site in order to write this ad copy. And on a whim, I ended up buying myself the leather jewelry travel case and a leather cross-body phone case and cardholder in Emerald Green. This happens to me almost every time and honestly, no regrets. So if you are on the go this year, I highly recommend checking out Quince's travel gear. As with everything from Quince, you will be getting the highest quality goods at half the cost because Quince works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So right now, go to quince.com slash believe for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it.

And you will. Now available in Canada, too. Don't keep settling for clothes and luggage that doesn't last. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash believe for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash believe. And remember that shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show. I run a small business and I have two small children, and that means that my husband and I are in a near constant state of decision fatigue. So the simple question of what should we make for dinners this week can lead to existential dread.

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You can find all of that information at the link in our show notes, and remember that shopping our sponsors helps support the show. There are many worthwhile critiques about how child protection is handled in the U.S., and we're going to dig into those this season. But, and sorry if this is a spoiler, there is no evidence that doctors are conspiring to kidnap children or even making a significant number of incorrect abuse diagnoses. So why has this idea gotten so much traction?

What is this actually about? I think what the plaintiff ultimately wanted to try was a civil rights case. And, Andrea, when you spoke earlier about this, you know, influx of what's been called generously a parent's rights movement, which is always in tension with what may be best for the child, this case was in the plaintiff's mind one of those cases in the foreman. They brought constitutional actions that were dismissed. I mean, you heard the backstory from the Kualski's escaping a communist system with the implication to only find themselves, you know, at the center of a deep state conspiracy

amongst multiple actors to harm Maya and target the mother for reasons that were never fully explained, at least not with evidence. And as the second district said, there was no evidence of, any intent directed at Biotto Kowalski whatsoever. But that was certainly what they wanted to put in front of the jury. And that was certainly one of the things that they thought that they could exploit for the purpose, from my perspective, of drumming up juror emotions. The plaintiff's lawyers and the Netflix film told an emotionally evocative story about a suffering family.

But by leaving out so much crucial information, that story obscured a very big, question. What would have happened if there hadn't been a report? What if Biata had been allowed to carry on? Should parents just be allowed to give their children 50 to 100 times the recommended dose of ketamine and subject them to experimental procedures that carry a 50% risk of death? According to Jack Kowalski's post-verdict comments in the press, yes. Parents have rights and they make the decision for their children. Ethan disagrees. So hospitals are not Burger King.

You can't walk into a hospital and have it your way and demand medical care that is wildly outside accepted medical standards. You can't do it for yourself, and it's going to draw extra scrutiny if you're going to demand it on behalf of a vulnerable child or a vulnerable adult that truly cannot consent on their own behalf. And that's fine. Our system is set up where we have

parents be the natural guardians of the children who are empowered to make reasonable medical decisions, just the same way that you can be appointed to be the medical guardian for somebody becomes old and infirm. But it doesn't give the guardian the unfettered right to demand treatment that medical providers know to be dangerous. You know, there are protocols and pathways for the safe treatment of chronic regional pain syndrome, for the safe treatment of conversion syndrome, of factitious disorder, and none of them call for doses of ketamine that I think the evidence showed were 23 milligrams per kilogram per hour, which is more than what you need to anesthetize a 2,000-pound horse. So the parents have rights to direct reasonable medical care,

but they don't have an unfettered right to direct and demand dangerous medical care. The question of what rights children should have as human beings isn't a new one. And the tension between children's rights to be safe and cared for and their parents' rights to make decisions on their behalf is something that hospitals have always been caught in the middle of. Hospitals have been dealing with this for years. There are religious sex that do not believe in blood transfusions. So hospitals have attorneys on standby that they call it to in the morning

to say we have a child here who's been in a horse. horrific accident, the child's bleeding out. The only way to survive is to transfuse blood, and the parents are saying that they're object on religious and moral grounds. We file motions with the court. We wake up the judge in the middle of the night. We get an order from the judge for immediate blood transfusions, and we transfuse the child to save the child's life above what the parents' wishes are. That's the tension in society where your religious rights and your rights to direct medical care, we've decided as a society end when it's going to jeopardize the life of a child. So it's not a new concept. It's not a new concept in the law, and it's not

isolated to cases like this. Halfway through the trial, just as the defense was going up, Judge Hunter Carroll ruled to dramatically limit testimony pertaining to Munchausen by proxy abuse. This was baffling, given that the abuse was the reason Maya had been separated from her parents in the first place. Not to mention the first. fact that the plaintiff had already been allowed to assert in their opening statement and had one witness testify that Biotta Kowalski did not have Munchausen by proxy, which they framed as a psychological condition rather than a form of abuse. So I'm certainly not here to, you know, criticize tough decisions made by the trial court on evidence, but to your question about

whether this particular issue brought in the mother's psychological diagnosis, There could be ways you could start the trial and go through the entire trial where that becomes less of an issue. However, if the plaintiffs are permitted to stand up an opening argument and talk about how the collective they set about to destroy this family with an erroneous diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy, or to talk about how, So even though Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital made the reasonable medical choice to try to escalate myus condition, whatever it may be, to the specialist at Nemours, that the family objected to that because of this erroneous diagnosis of medical child abuse from Munchausen Breit proxy. That, from my perspective, necessitates the defense to be able to justify to the jury that's

not heard this testimony for several weeks to justify that that diagnosis or that working diagnosis, whether it appears in the medical record or on medical billing, was made reasonably. And I think the question that you're getting to next is, if that's true, then why didn't we, watching this trial, get to see all of Sally Smith's detailed report that the hospital relied on in part in arriving at similar diagnoses? And I think, you know, importantly with the framing of this, right, the question is whether there was, number one, cause for concern to make that immediate call. And then was there evidence of abuse that necessitated this separation period and her being sheltered in the hospital? And in fact, there was extensive evidence. And so that's the question. However, the plaintiff did have several witnesses testified that Beauda, including Dr. Chopra, who is not an expert on this. that Biazza-Kowalski did not have Munchausen by proxy. And so they were permitted to testify, as you said, like in the negative that this was an outrageous allegation.

And that, you know, Biazza was a caring mother who was making appropriate medical decisions. So there was evidence allowed to be presented about Munchausen by proxy by the plaintiff. Can you talk about the decision that the trial court made halfway through the trial when it was the defenses, turn to present. So from my perspective, sitting at counsel table, it appeared the court wanted to refocus the trial on the remaining allegations, medical malpractice, intentional infliction of emotional distress. And I think there were some battery allegations in there as well.

And the court's central question was, what does the mother's state of mind or whether she suffers from the psychological diagnosis have to do with whether the hospital provided medically acceptable care to Maya Kowalski. In the abstract, that's a completely fair question, right? Because if you take it one step back further, my client's position from day one was whether this is CRPS or whether it's factitious disorder, conversion disorder, or a psychological pain response, The treatment for this is still not wild doses of ketamine there are enough to anesthetize the horse.

Now, back to your question, you know, in real time from my perspective, and it's just mine at defense counsel table, we felt it necessary to paint the full picture for the jury, so we didn't look like monsters that were coming up with this diagnosis to target the family. But in the abstract, that was the way the court was looking at the question in real time. certainly that affected the presentation of evidence after that. Yeah, because while there was quite a lot of evidence that was admitted at trial and during the pre-trial period,

I mean, this has been one of the benefits as a journalist about reporting on this case, is that we just have so much information to work with. There are only pieces of that that were actually presented at trial. I don't think Beyond his blog was ever presented at trial, which was a pretty strong piece of evidence. And so this trial court decision made it so that certain things that even were available to the public were not available to the jury. And then it also meant that the one piece of documentation that really tied all of this together from the person who had the highest level of expertise about child abuse and who had reviewed thousands of. of pages of medical records. And that would be Dr. Sally Smith's report.

And that was never admitted into evidence. That remains private and sealed to this day. It does. Yes, her report is confidential. I mean, the lawyers have seen it because we had the potential to introduce it in evidence. So I know what it says. Obviously, Dr. Smith knows what it says.

The family knows what it says. The family did not want the jury to see it for understandable reasons. But ultimately, the court made the decision that the court made, based on what I told you, that was what I understood to be the court's logic. You know, the court certainly had their reasons for following it. They were understandable. To me, in a vacuum, you know, it was, but again, it was frustrating to some degree that that report felt necessary from the defense's perspective to rebut insinuations of these false allegations or that they came out of nowhere. they were introduced by the plaintiff.

You know, as someone who tells stories for a living about abuse and specifically about this abuse, you have to really tie it together. It's not well understood. It's not easy for your average juror to understand exactly what the harm was to this child and what the danger that she was in. But, you know, just in terms of like the asymmetry in the storytelling, that you have the plaintiff able to tell this very dramatic story, which they did with all kinds of tactics, right? They had a lot of pictures. They played the 911 call. They had videos of the family.

They had videos of Maya in pain. You know, they used a lot of elements to tell this story. sort of did that decision kind of hamstring the defense's ability to tell a story that actually put the focus back on my? Yeah, perhaps. So again, from the hospital's perspective, and maybe let me take a step back from that. And this is me talking, right, from my perspective, but it's based on a lot of conversations with health care providers. A parent coming in with a different belief of what their child has is not uncommon. And most health care providers are not offended by that. Like, health care providers are human.

Medicine is an art and a science. You have a constellation of symptoms. And sometimes reasonable people can disagree. That's why they call it a standard of care, not necessarily one, you know, correct diagnosis in every circumstance. And where am I going with this, Andrea? So think about it this way. If somebody comes into a hospital or a doctor and says, I think my child's got irritable bowel syndrome,

and what really helps them is if I give them, you know, an insurer and two Tylenol when they complain. The doctor could tell you, based on my test and based on my clinical diagnosis and the symptoms, I don't think your child has that. But if that's the only treatment you're recommending, for what you think the diagnosis is, we're not calling DCF on you because you're not putting the child in danger. So merely because the hospital is a difference that, you know, we don't think, and when I say we, I'm speaking on behalf of basically every certified medical professional

with the exception of Kirkpatrick and Hannah, we don't think Maya has CRPS, says Lurie's Hospital in Chicago, says Tampa General Hospital, says all children's hospital, and says everyone else in between, they're not calling DCF. The call was based on the fact that you're hearing evidence of immediate threat to Maya's life, either from the drugs that are being given or what the mother is saying that she's going to do if you don't put my child in a propofal or a ketamine-induced coma. So, you know, going back to your initial question of, you know, how does this affect the presentation of evidence?

I think it affects it to the degree that this is not just about a parent disagreeing with what the diagnosis is and portraying this as, oh, you Ivy League people up in your tower think you know what's best for my child. The imminent danger that a child could be in if the parents fervently believe and are disregarding medical advice from several world-class and local providers is where, you know, where you're the context needs to come for the jury to understand ultimately why the hospital was making reasonable decisions, both in their medical care and their recommendations for future care. Yeah. So take us to the verdict. What ultimately was the verdict in the award in this case?

Gross verdict, I believe, was for $261 million that was set aside slightly by the trial court on some post-trial. out motions, that verdict has been completely vacated or erased by the second district court of appeal, finding there were multiple errors in the way that the chapter 39, the statutory immunity, was ultimately applied. So right now, there is no verdict against my client and no judgment that we're liable for. 2026 is turning into my year of giving keynotes. So I'm going to be traveling around a lot, heading to Chicago, Florida, Nashville, San Diego, and who knows where else. So I decided it was time for a little luggage upgrade.

So I went where I go for all my high-quality essentials. Quince, of course. I'm always finding new categories of things to shop for on quince, and they've added a lot of items to their travel section recently. My brown Italian leather hand-woven tote was a favorite purchase of last year. They also have these very cute quilted totes and duffles and their best-selling hard-shell suitcases in carry-on and checked sizes. The set is only $229.

True story, I was just perusing the site in order to write this ad copy, and on a whim, I ended up buying myself the leather jewelry travel case and a leather cross-body phone case and cardholder in emerald green. This happens to me almost every time, and honestly, no regrets. So if you are on the go this year, I highly recommend checking out Quince's travel gear. As with everything from Quince, you will be getting the high. highest quality goods at half the cost because Quince works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So right now go to quince.com slash believe for free shipping and

365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes and luggage that doesn't last. Go to QI-N-C-E.com slash believe for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash believe. And remember that shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show. When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get

when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. I've thought a lot about why the Kowalski story took off the way it did, and how such a well-documented abuse case got laundered to the extent of a sympathetic Netflix documentary and a quarter-billion-dollar verdict in court. It certainly doesn't hurt that Maya is a beautiful white girl with a dead mother, a sort of true crime Disney princess.

But I think Biata's absence from this story is what really allowed it to take off. Biazza Kowalski was a complicated person in real life. life, someone capable of subjecting her daughter to unfathomable abuse. She said she would put her daughter on hospice and let her die. I have no reason to believe that she wasn't serious about that threat. But in the retelling, Biazza is flattened into an archetypal self-sacrificing heroic mother, the one people want to believe in. And because she wasn't around to complicate this picture, the filmmakers and lawyers got to make her into whatever they wanted. And of course, my Maya and her younger brother are incredibly sympathetic figures.

They've lived through a multitude of traumas in their young lives. But the idea that the doctors were the cause of these traumas, rather than the intervention that likely saved Maya Kowalski's life, is counter to reality. But I have a strong sense that most people watching the film and cheering on the initial jury decision don't have any idea what this verdict actually meant. From my perspective, had this verdict remained,

this would have continued to be a massive chilling effect on the ability of mandatory reporters to report their suspicions of medical child abuse, physical child abuse, mental child abuse or neglect, without the fear of being prosecuted in a civil court, being prosecuted in the court of public opinion, and potentially having your life and your finances and your professional license ruined. And unless you're on the front lines of this, I represent hospitals for a living. So I have a lot of people call me with questions. What do you think in this scenario?

And I remember one that really haunted me. It was about two weeks after the verdict. And I had a client, a doctor call me who was an ER physician and said, I have a child in here. she's an 11-year-old girl. She's got a severe vaginal infection. And the person who's posing as the parent doesn't seem to speak the same language as her, right? Flashing red lights for child trafficking and sexual abuse. And her question was, if I call this, do I have to attach my name to it?

Which in Florida, you do, if you're a health care provider. Can that be discoverable? and can I be sued? And the answer to all of those questions are yes, yes, and yes. And what I have to explain in this, while you can be sued, one would hope that given the fact that you have what I think is more than a reasonable suspicion that should you be sued, we'd be able to get the case dismissed right away. Which always leads to the next question, then what happened in coal? And I'm not trying to make it so simple to say that, you know, there's no scenario that any mandated reporter could step above or beyond the bounds of immunity, even though I believe in the second district seemed to agree that the evidence was that all children's complied in good faith with their mandatory reporting obligations. But imagine if you're in that situation on the front line of protecting children and you're positive. And that's what I'm talking about in terms of the chilling effect.

If it happens in a case that's that obvious, then what happens on the cases that are more on the margins? And when the statute is written where these people can be prosecuted for failure to report a suspicion, not a substantiated belief, but a suspicion, then I think from my perspective for those two years, the chilling effect was very real. Much of the media surrounding these cases emphasize the idea that doctors and child abuse pediatricians are rushing to judgment. Diane Neary, the journalist I mentioned up top, recently did a season of serial called The Preventionist, where she hammered her argument against child abuse pediatricians with these words in the series finale. Quote, I'm saying even one pause, one wait a second, might be the difference between a family staying together or being broken apart.

But as Ethan says, there's a very real cost to that pause, and children are the ones who pay it. We don't have to guess what happens when doctors start ignoring warning signs of abuse. The deaths of Olivia Gant and Colin McDaniel tell us how that story ends, how Maya's story could have ended. The fate of Justina Pellitier, whose parents' lawsuit was the precursor to the Kowalskies, shows yet another possible path. The Pellateer's lost their lawsuit against the hospital, but they did get their daughter back. Now in her 20s, she is deeply impacted by her ongoing health issues. It seems very unlikely that she will ever live an independent life. So the big question now is, did the appeal, which barely made a blip in the media,

put us back on the right track? The Second District's decision in favor of my client was, from my perspective, very well-written, very lengthy, very thorough analysis of the way the lot is right now. I believe that is going to be a vindication of the rights and duties of mandatory reporters, so long as they're staying within the law, complying in good faith with their rights and obligations under the law. So my optimistic view of this is that the decision in favor of my clients is going to vindicate the rights and responsibilities of all mandatory reporters. Now, the attack for which those of us, and I put myself in that camp, believe that the law should remain broad, that we would like to, you know, we would like the state to be aware of reasonable suspicions of abuse, the vast majority of which are screened out without any action or any interference of parents' rights. But I think if there's going to be an attack from the camp that believes these laws are too restrictive, that parents should have.

closer to unfettered rights to make decisions of their child, even if from the mind of a reasonable person that those decisions are harming a child, I think you're going to see the attacks at the legislative end. Because from the court's perspective, they're interpreting the law as it's written. You know, if you read the second district's opinion in favor of my clients, they're doing an excellent deep dive into here's what the statute says, here's what the entire statutory scheme is, And based on our interpretation of the statute, here's what the decision should ultimately be in favor of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital. And if people want to undo that, it's not going to be by bringing case after case. It's going to be lobbying for legislators to roll this back.

It could be rolled back with something as simple as changing the criteria of mandatory reporters have to report a reasonable suspicion. You could change that definition to say they're only required to report substantiated complaints that are verifiable through a panel of three medical experts that would make the standard for a report so infinitely high it would only catch those that are so egregious. These are societal questions. And for the past 60 years, society has decided to cast a SNAT very broadly. you're at the front line of this, Andrea, and if you're sensing a sea change, you should be alarmed. As Ethan indicates, I've been keeping an eye on the shifts in these conversations around doctors, abuse, and parental rights. In fact, it's baked into my origin story. My sister Megan Carter was covered in Mike Hicksenbach's series, Do No Harm, along with a whole host of other families who claim to have been falsely accused of abuse by doctors.

And Hicks and Bog isn't alone. Similar stories have made the page. of USA Today, The New York Times, serial podcast, New York Magazine, and this one really hurt, pro-Publica. And as I've tracked these stories, I've noticed a trend. While cases of false accusations of Munchausen by proxy often make big headlines, as they did in the Justina Pellateer case and the Maya Kowalski case, there are a bunch of other cases being ushered in with them that are seemingly much more straightforward physical abuse cases. Munchausen by proxy cases are particularly easy to misrepresent in the media because of how misunderstood this form of abuses.

If you leave enough context out, you can frame a perpetrator as a heroic, embattled mom, especially because perpetrators themselves have often put in years of work to build that image by the time these false accusation stories end up in the press. The media coverage of their cases becomes another part of their whole grift, another opportunity to play both the victim and the martyr, to pull one over on not just the journalist, but their entire audience. And Munchausen by proxy stories are, by their very nature, difficult to unravel and get to the bottom of. It's also really important for anyone reporting on child abuse to understand how these systems actually work. Because that pause that journalists like Neri are asking for, it's already happening.

There already are systems in place to rule out abuse and protect families from being unduly separated from their children. But that part doesn't make such a juicy headline. So this is my personal opinion on this. It's the same when you watch Law and Order and they skip jury selection because it's boring and long and, you know, all of a sudden you've got a jury and you're starting. But that's kind of one of the most important elements of this. And until you do it, you don't really realize how much goes into that process. This is the same what the due process writes after. a call is made. And there's this perception that, you know, a doctor or any mandatory reporter

can pick up the phone and call the suspicion of abuse or neglect. And within moments, the child is taken away from the parents. That's not how it works. There are, as there were in Maia Kualski's case, there's an investigation. There has to be a well-documented file that is brought before a judge who's going to look at that at multiple stages. The emergency stage? Is this an emergency where the child's at imminent risk where I have to put a shelter order in place? Because there's obvious signs of abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, or someone threatening to take the child into hospice to put them under? Is this a situation where, you know, I can do something temporary by saying like, you know, here's an injunction against giving this medication, but everybody cool off and come back in a week and, you know, the child's going home with the parents. And so your listeners have to remember that there's a lot of due process. And from my experience, I will admit, I don't have a lot of experience in front of the dependency court, but from what I would admit to be somewhat limited experience, the judges are very reluctant to start interfering with parents' rights unless they have to. And the other thing I would tell you is, yes, I can completely understand.

understand a situation of a mandatory reporter thinking, okay, the child has confided in me that, you know, dad spanks them, right? Something that I think reasonable minds in society can think there's degrees of that and maybe I don't spank my kids, but we're not going to start separating every child from their parent who gets a swat in the butt, even if I don't think that's appropriate behavior. But if you don't call in something that's setting off your alarm, How do you know that's not the fourth or fifth time that child's confided in somebody? Why wouldn't you let the agencies that are trained to track these think, huh? That's the fifth time now that I've got a call from five different teachers saying that

that kid was subject to some type of corporal punishment at home that made the child uncomfortable. Maybe we should investigate this because these kids now come forward five times. And so that's the type of thing that when you get rid of the reasonable suspicion standard, you're also getting rid of the ability of trained professionals to track whether there's a pattern that may, in isolation, not seem threatening to the welfare of a child or vulnerable adult, but over time lets them track potential problems. Do you think that medical professionals would still, report if they weren't required by law, but they knew that they would be protected by the law.

In my experience, having gone through this, perhaps the most heroic thing that I've heard, from my clients that participated in Maya Kowalski's case, who were raked over the coals in the Court of Public Opinion, raked over the coals in a biased movie that gave no effort to give context intentionally concealed deposition testimony that would have put the hospital in a much more favorable light, were dragged into a forum and subject to intense public scrutiny. When you ask them, was this worth it? Their response is if it helped a child get onto a road where they detox from drugs that could have potentially killed them, put a child on the road where they're running, where they're back in school, where they're able to

maximize their potential, I would do it again. So, you know, when you say all health care providers, you know, of course there are some that are going to wash their hands at the situation, but when you really look at the people that have dedicated their lives to pediatrics, they're not in it for the money. There are much more lucrative. areas of medicine that people could go into. I am optimistic that if you tweaked the law, you would still get a lot of people on the pediatric side that would err on doing what they needed to do to protect the child so long as they knew that they had statutory protections should their reasonable suspicion be opposed by somebody.

Sometimes Munchausen by proxy cases come to a head in a dramatic moment the way that Maya's case did, but it's always preceded by a pattern of abuse over time. But so many cases in these compendiums of falsely accused parents are not Munchausen by proxy cases, but cases of abusive head trauma, a form of child abuse that, unlike Munchausen by proxy, involves a specific incident and about which there is a huge degree of medical and scientific consensus on how to do. diagnose. So how were these stories ending up in the same bucket as Munchausen by proxy? Though the Kowalski case is the main focus of Take Care of Maya, the film widens its lens to four other families who claim they've also been falsely accused of abuse by the child abuse

pediatrician, Dr. Sally Smith. And as the credits roll, a montage of families from around the country plays. These parents also say they've been falsely accused by doctors. Here's reporter Daphne Chen in Take Care of Maya. It was January 2019 when I hit publish on that piece about the Kowalski family, and I kind of thought I'd move on to the next thing. But that was when the call started coming in and the email started coming in. And I realized that this was a lot bigger than just the Kowalski's. I'm sitting at my desk and I start hearing from more and more families. People who had gone to the doctor for help for their kids and then became the target of the system.

These families walked in, hoping for help for their child, and some of them walked out in handcuffs. And this helps frame Jack Kowalski's legal crusade as addressing a systemic injustice. He's not just dragging his traumatized children through a highly publicized years-long legal battle for a payday. He's there on behalf of all falsely accused parents who've been victimized by the system. Here's Viviana Graham, one of the other parents featured in the film. This young girl, Maya, represents hope. for all of us and bringing Sally Smith down, bringing the system down. This is the framing throughout the varied media stories and lawsuits around the country.

Out of control, child abuse pediatricians falsely accusing parents is a systemic issue that needs reform. I started off reporting on the Maya Kowalski case from the outside, following the trial and reading huge piles of legal documents. But then, midway through my reporting, I got a voicemail. Hi, Andrea. This is Patrick. I am Dr. Sally Smith's son. The media at this time was excruiting Dr. Sally Smith, the child abuse pediatrician in the Maya Kowalski case, calling her vile names and criticizing every minute of tape from her depositions. Seemingly, every family who'd ever been involved in a case that she'd provided an evaluation for sprang forth to claim that it was not their children who'd been the victims, but they themselves, innocent parents who'd suffered at the hands of Dr. Smith. I was the lone voice in the media who seemed to understand that far from being the villain of the Maya Kowalski story,

Sally Smith, along with the care team at Johns Hopkins All Children's, had been one of its heroes. People were not happy with me for this take. In fact, my reporting on Dr. Smith landed me my very first death threats. After the trial was over and the quarter billion dollar verdict rendered, I flew down to Florida to interview Dr. Smith. By the time I sat down with her, I knew the Kowalski case up, down and sideways, and of course this was Munchausen by proxy, my area of expertise. But I became curious about the other four families and take care of Maya, who were alleging that they were victims of Dr. Smith. There was one story that really stuck with me in particular,

that of the sole male voice in this cohort, a Florida man named John Stewart, who claims he was falsely accused of the murder of 15-month-old Nolan Kelly. Here he is and take care of Maya. I spent over 300 days in jail before they finally dropped the charges. They ruined my life because of it. In addition to his fleeting soundbites in the film, John inserted himself into the courtroom drama by showing up on the day Dr. Sally Smith testified.

He confronted her outside of the courthouse and filmed the aftermath, which was shared on TikTok. She's evil. She's a liar. She's a malpractice Sally. this Sally. She freaking charged me with a crime that I did not commit. The medical evidence clearly shows that I was innocent and she has never been held accountable. She's freaking medically kidnapped, Maya Kowalski. She needs to be held accountable. The fact that you as a deputy are not arresting her disgusts me and disturbs me on every level. She is fucking killed people. She has literally killed people. She is freaking abused children. She has harmed children. And I am reporting this to you. I want her arrested for that. Please arrest her for that. Please arrest her for

She is illegally kidnapped numerous children. She has illegally imprisoned numerous parents without any medical evidence. And she has not been held accountable. And I'm begging anybody in law enforcement to do their job and hold that evil psychopath, narcissistic scumbag, accountable. There were almost no details in the film about what happened to Nolan Kelly or any of the other children. But on my way to interview Dr. Sally Smith two years ago, I read the media coverage of John's case. The most thoroughly reported account of John's case was in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

It featured four pictures of John, two of which showed him in his military uniform. There's only one picture of Nolan. He's standing outside with one of his siblings. Panceless, as one-year-olds often are, he has adorable tufts of curls, and his big dark eyes look up into the camera. I had so many questions about what really happened to night. Nolan. I was overwhelmed by sadness reading about it. He'd been 15 months old when he died, a month younger than my own son was then. The part of me that was curious to know more was drowned out by the part of me that couldn't bear to. So I let it go. Until two years later, I got a message.

Well, I was actually watching Dateline and a show about Dr. Vega being involved came on and I was like you know I started so I started I started I started thinking about some things so then I asked them you know about my case in particular at chat GPT and it brought up your podcast so I looked at it listened to it and saw that I felt that you were basically defending Sally Smith erroneously So, yeah, so that's why I reached out to y'all because I didn't feel that it was right that she basically got to lie again.

Coming up this season on Nobody Should Believe Me, I think an inevitable conclusion that this is not accidental trauma in the child. The Emmy ruled this a homicide, right? Yes, correct. One of the main problems with the system is that it is focused so much on poor people that it ends up really missing serious cases of abuse.

Then the question is, just because something makes sense, is it true? These things that they introduce is speculative is just to throw off the court. The court is not a medical arena. It's a legal arena. Reviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of documents about this child and ended up producing a 45-page report, delineating all of the different ways that there was evidence of medical child abuse in the case. The arguments were the exact same tactics. I had spent two years exploring with vaccines.

I didn't have to go through the whole let me look into this because I recognized them. I think he knows exactly what happens. I think blacking out is just a cop-out excuse. He knows what he did is horrific. I mean, just watching him, I think he's a dangerous person, and I think, frankly, if you put this on the airways, you may escalate. Parents have extraordinarily strong rights in this country, and children are the ones that have very, very limited rights. Come on. I mean, that's, if you can't get your mind around that, like, there's no point even talking anymore, seriously. The assumption that being with a parent is always going to be the best solution. will always feel wrong to me. I will always grieve that I didn't get those years in a situation

away from my parents. Nobody should believe me is written, reported, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our co-executive producer is Mariah Gossett. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, story editing by Nicole Hill. Research and fact-checking by Aaron Ajai. Additional research by Jessa v. Randall. Mixing and engineering by Robin Edgar. Our production manager is Nola Karmouche. Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Sound Snap, and Slipstream. Special thanks this week to Ethan Shapiro.