Dyan Neary

And on his screen, he saw their faces pop up.

She told Mark about how both her boys had complex medical needs.

One had autism and an autoimmune disorder.

The other had autism and a metabolic disorder.

She said she and her husband had spent years working hard to find their boys the right therapists and treatments, medicines and vitamins and supplements to get them stable.

And by her account, they mostly succeeded.

But then one day, one of their boys started to behave erratically.

They took him to the Lehigh Valley Children's Hospital in Allentown, where the mom said a doctor puzzled over the case and what seemed like too many interventions for the boys.

She said that without ever meeting with her or her husband, the doctor diagnosed Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological disorder in which a parent fakes their child's illnesses for attention or even intentionally hurts them and then seeks treatment for those injuries.

It's a popular storyline in movies, but in reality, it's a rare condition.

In this case, the mom said both she and her husband were accused of having it, and both of them were barred from seeing their son.

The hospital declined my interview request for this series, but in an email, a representative wrote, quote, End quote.

In the video call, the mother and her lawyer explained to Mark that the child abuse accusation progressed quickly, from the hospital to an investigation by children and youth to family court.

The parents lost custody of their younger son for a month, their older son for a year.

This family knew of other families, whom they put in touch with Mark.

He made a spreadsheet, assigning each family a color so he could keep track.

The green family, the blue family.

The couple he just talked to were the gray family.

He knew he couldn't take their stories at face value, so he started fact-checking them, which he hated.

It was awkward to ask people for proof, documentation, but they produced it.