Dyan Neary

The gray family, who had been accused of Munchausen.

The blue family, the orange family.

All these people Mark had spoken to privately.

He'd been encouraging them all along to tell their stories, but he knew it was a big ask.

Close to a hundred people had shown up.

Mark stood against the wall, close to the door, in view of both the families lined up at the lectern and the commissioners at the front of the room.

The commissioners, who up to now hadn't pledged to take action, hadn't responded to his report, who hadn't wanted to meet with the families, now, Mark hoped, they'd have to engage.

They'd see these people, hear these people, and maybe they'd be moved.

Obviously, they weren't going to fix the problem on the spot, but maybe they'd feel compelled to say something meaningful.

And then maybe, down the line, they'd do something meaningful.

About a dozen people headed straight to the lectern to form a line behind the microphone.

They were holding pieces of paper with notes, prepared statements.

They looked serious, a little nervous.

He says everyone can have five minutes to talk about non-agenda items.

They begin.

One man says he and his wife brought their baby daughter to the hospital because of a scary incident when she'd stopped breathing.

Another father heads to the mic.

One after the other, they talk about their confusion, about how they still can't really understand what happened, about the astonishment, for some of them, of receiving a Munchausen by proxy diagnosis.

The speakers represent 13 families accused of abuse.

Their stories are both super specific and part of a pattern of parents walking into a Lehigh Valley hospital to get help for a child, only to leave without them.