Mom Charged After Girl, 10, Needlessly Given Pacemaker, Feed Tube

MILWAUKEE, WI — Authorities in Milwaukee County say a 34-year-old Oklahoma City woman has been charged with child abuse and child neglect after she faked medical conditions in her 10-year-old daughter, resulting in unnecessary treatments including the installation of a pacemaker, feeding tube and an IV port in the girl — and that those treatments nearly ended her life.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County, Alisha Newman brought her 10-year-old daughter into the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin on the morning of May 7 for an appointment. Investigators say Gisela Chemlinsky, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Children's Hospital, saw that the girl's skin looked pale, ashen and that she looked severely ill.

Investigators say an Immediate Response team was called in, providing her emergency care and placement in the hospital's intensive care unit. According to the criminal complaint, doctors treated her for a severe infection that required extended hospitalization — the second time in about a month.

When the medical team at Children's Hospital began to review the girl's medical history, investigators said they found that Newman routinely provided false information to medical providers in the treatment of her daughter, leading to misdiagnoses of muscular dystrophy, mitochondrial disease and a bradycardia syndrome among others. Investigators said Newman brought her daughter to see health care providers in Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Tennessee for medical procedures, including the installation of a pacemaker, a feeding tube and an IV port, that posed risks to her daughter's life.

According to the criminal complaint, medical professionals at Children's Hospital told authorities that the child was likely "the victim of factitious disorder by proxy on the part of the
defendant."

A factitious disorder by proxy, previously known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, is described by mental health professionals as a situation where someone falsely claims that another person — in this case the Newman's 10-year-old daughter — has physical signs of illness, and that those signs were created by another person — in this case Newman — with the result that misleads others.

Alyssa Stephany a medical doctor at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin told investigators that following her expert medical assessment of Newman's 10-year-old daughter, that Newman's "inaccurate portrayals of medical information have both indirectly and directly led to unnecessary medicalization, procedures, tests, and undue harm to (her daughter.)"

Investigators say Newman has been seeking treatment for her daughter since the "first year of her life." Newman is currently being held in the Milwaukee County Jail and is expected to make her initial appearance on May 28.