Andrea Dunlop

And that comes up a lot, right?

Like a lot of perpetrators will say, well, I got this diagnosis from a doctor.

Well, okay, but if you got that diagnosis from a doctor and you use deception to do it, well, then that's abuse.

And even if that diagnosis is real, if you were making the condition worse, if you were lying to doctors about symptoms—

if you were pushing for unnecessary interventions, those things are all still abuse.

So abuse can absolutely still happen with a child that has a real condition, and that's just a complete misunderstanding of this abuse to say that it can't.

And as to the second thing of being formally diagnosed,

And yeah, your mom was not criminally convicted and she's not formally diagnosed.

There is still evidence of abuse because of your experience, because of what doctors have reported, because of what's in your medical records.

And that is actually typically how – and I'm curious to know about how your process of how you were able to put a name to it.

Yeah.

You know, that is, I think, again, a misunderstanding of Munchausen by proxy being primarily this diagnosis, you know, the psychiatric diagnosis of factitious disorder imposed on another.

It is in the DSM, but like it's abuse, it's a crime, and there either is evidence of that crime or there is not evidence of that crime.

And in your case, there is evidence of the crime of your mother's abuse.

And therefore, there is no legitimate question of whether or not you suffered abuse.

And anyone who's saying that there is at this point, as your story has been well explored, you know, and Mark Feldman obviously participated in the documentary.

He's as unassailable of an expert as there is.

There is no legitimate question about that.

I'm curious to know, obviously, while you were in the situation, you understood that something was wrong, something bad was happening.

When did you first discover that this was a thing called Munchausen by proxy?