Jake’s search for answers pulls him into the unsettling world of Munchausen by proxy—a rare, insidious form of abuse where illness is manufactured for attention. And as he revisits his own medical history, he’s left to wonder: did a real diagnosis conceal something even darker? Content warning: Drug use/abuse, addiction, medical trauma, child abuse, child loss, pregnancy loss, medical child abuse, death and dying, mental health crises, emotional distress & mature content. https://www.munchausensupport.com/ Resources can be found on our website, blinkthepodcast.com . . . . . Hosted and produced by Corinne Vien Co-created by Jake Haendel Original composition by Michael Marguet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Munchausen by proxy?
The only reason I knew about Munchausen by proxy was that movie The Sixth Sense. I didn't think of it in the sense at the time like she made me sick or was making me sick. I thought she enjoyed the attention of people. Caring for me or the sympathy or whatever. So I did Google Munchausen breath proxy.
Chapter 2: How did Jake discover Munchausen by proxy?
Those thoughts went through my head because it was so strange for me that, you know, wonder if I could survive. No one else had. And if I could and I got there. through, then we could rebuild the life we always thought about. And then that was actually happening in its infancy, and she started backing up and distancing herself, and I thought that was so weird.
So this was going through my head, and I'm learning new information day by day. So I googled Mudge Heslinbury Proxy, and
Chapter 3: Who is Dr. Mark Feldman and what role did he play?
And this is where Jake found Dr. Mark Feldman. Dr. Feldman, who has since retired, is an international expert in factitious disorders, including Munchausen by proxy. He's served as an expert consultant and an expert witness in cases nationally and internationally. And also, his website is the first one that pops up when Googling Munchausen by proxy.
And so I sent to a generic inbox on the website. I was like, Jay Candle, I'm in the hospital. I went through something crazy. I had a question. And then he kind of, I think within 48 hours, answered, which I was shocked. And then connected me with a team of people.
Jake received an email which detailed a bit of what the process was to determine whether Munchausen by proxy had been perpetrated on him and any ensuing investigation. He was also asked questions about his access to his health care records, if he was still married, and other questions which detailed the concern and danger that he could be in if he was, in fact, a victim of Munchausen by proxy.
And they needed a bunch of money from me to pursue the investigation at the time that was, you know, I was trying to get out of the hospital. That was the main goal that time.
Jake's initial investigation into the disorder stalled when further inquiry required payment. However, I reached out to the organization Munchausen Support, and through them, I was connected with Jordan Hope, a survivor of Munchausen by proxy abuse and a powerful advocate in the field.
Jordan serves on the MVP committee board through APSAC, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, and their work is focused on helping survivors heal and navigate life after this abuse. They lead support groups, manage intake and referrals for those affected by MBPA, and they offer one-on-one coaching.
Jordan also travels the country giving presentations to professionals to improve the care and recognition of Munchausen by proxy victims. After I reached out, Jordan's team was able to contact Dr. Feldman and confirm the correspondence with Jake and with the professional he was referred to by Dr. Feldman.
Through my conversations with Jordan, they really helped me better understand what Munchausen by proxy can look like in real-life cases.
My name is Jordan Hope. I also go by Jo. I use they, them pronouns. And I got into the field working with Munchausen by proxy abuse because I actually survived this abuse. I did not know about it until I was 22 years old. I grew up thinking that I had Munchausen asthma, a rare blood disease, a severe back disorder, many other ailments, broken bones, all these things.
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Chapter 4: What are the signs of Munchausen by proxy abuse?
A lethal form of abuse, yet notoriously difficult to diagnose because the perpetrator often appears loving and attentive and deeply concerned, when in reality, they are the source of the victim's suffering. It's a manipulation of trust, and like Jordan said, for the 6-9% of victims, it's proved fatal.
I think a lot of times when people think of munchausen by proxy, people think of medical. But there's also like psychological and educational. So with educational, we see a lot of moms saying that child needs an IEP, child is autistic, child has ADHD. Teachers and everyone else in child's life do not see any of these things that are being claimed.
With psychological, it's a lot of child has these different mental health disorders, child is acting out in these ways, child needs to go to the psych ward, be on all these medications, things like that. Once again, nobody else is really seeing these different things differently. All of this can be induced, fabricated, or exaggerated.
So in our more severe cases, that's typically where we start to see like the induction. And typically that's going to be more in the medical cases. The abuser might be saying like, well, the person has a
fever of 107 and then you take the temperature and it's like 98 or 99 or something like that just a lot of that sort of stuff of those incongruencies there's oftentimes a worsening of symptoms when the abuser is with the victim that tend to go away magically when the abuser is no longer around you You might see animals that are suddenly sick or have unexplained or unusual illnesses or conditions.
That's a pretty big one. You might see putting feces and urine into a feeding tube or trach or into different things to cause sepsis. You might see suffocating to make heart monitors go off.
giving lethal amounts of medication to induce different symptoms and those are typically more of I think where some of that lethality oftentimes is more likely because you don't know how one extra med will that be what causes death and sometimes oftentimes I would say that that's not
Jordan mentioned that the real number of cases is likely much higher than what's officially reported or documented. But it left me with one pressing question.
Where is everyone? How does something this devastating happen over and over again and still go unnoticed by family, friends, even medical professionals? How does it slip through the cracks so easily?
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Chapter 5: How does social media influence Munchausen by proxy cases?
We've spent some time talking about what the abuser does, and Jordan made it clear. The key word in Munchausen by proxy, abuse, is abuse. But I found myself wondering, from a psychological perspective, are there any common threads, any patterns or traits that show up again and again in these perpetrators?
I think that there's still a lot of research that needs to be done on this, but I think that typically what is seen is these perpetrators tend to have cluster B personality disorders underlying, so there might be... narcissism or borderline personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.
I always give a disclaimer that cluster B personality disorders do not mean that a person is dangerous or bad or is more likely to abuse people or anything like that. I think that there's other things that have to be going on, other characteristics, other traits and things.
A lot of times we see some of this stuff start playing out and you kind of hear about maybe this person in their teens was lying and started to lie about different things or got caught in a bunch of different lies or always had these big stories or was dramatic or manipulative eventually. They have a child or maybe they have a lot of miscarriages first or they have trouble with birth.
A lot of these cases, the child is born premature, which we don't know but suspect that there might be things that are happening to kind of induce earlier pregnancy. It's really important that we kind of like recognize that, again, like we don't always know the underlying like why someone is doing this.
Sometimes it might be that a person is wanting to cause harm, isn't feeling empathy, doesn't feel scared or sad that their child is sick or hurting and might be getting something like pleasure or that sympathy and all that attention. And that's just like all they're focused on.
But sometimes a person has found that they have to over exaggerate in order to actually be taken seriously or things like that. And maybe it's gone too many steps too far.
Or sometimes maybe a person is overly anxious and has some sort of illness, anxiety, or OCD, and they're still abusing their child, but they might need different types of support than somebody who is purposefully causing harm for the
And like having that knowing deception, it's really important to recognize when a caretaker, when there's knowing deception, they know what they're doing and are aware that they're abusing their child versus when there isn't that knowing deception. If they don't know that they're being deceptive, then it's not going to be munchausen by proxy abuse.
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Chapter 6: What are the statistics surrounding Munchausen by proxy?
In my own story, my mom always had something going on. She, at 17, told her parents that if they didn't sign the papers for her to get married, that she was going to move out of state with this guy and they would never see her again. She dropped out of high school and told them that. And, you know, they did sign it. She had a lot of this, like, manipulation and things like that.
A lot of these different red flags that we see. And around that time, got in a really severe car accident where I believe the driver died. I want to believe that that's kind of where this behavior started. After that, she was always sick. She always had something wrong. She started suing places. She would get injured at work, wherever she worked. Then she
She had me and suddenly I was always sick and had all of these things and I left the house and then she was still sick all the time. You know, I do think that at times there is kind of this thing that can happen that can trigger this like, wow, this is a way for me to get attention and care and get all of these unmet needs met. And we've seen cases, too, though, where there isn't.
There isn't some trigger or something that causes it or an event that happens. The child grew up in a healthy home, had healthy attachments, had all of these different supports and care and all this stuff, and then still does commit this type of abuse.
When I think about Jake specifically, it raises a complicated question. Jake had a real diagnosis, acute toxic progressive leukoencephalopathy. There's no denying it. It's rare, it's often fatal, and Jake had the medical records and the brain scans to prove it. His condition was the result of inhaling a toxin, something very real, very physical, and very deadly, for most.
So with all of that being true, would Munchausen by proxy even make sense in a case like his? Could both be true at once? Or does the presence of a legitimate illness or disease rule it out entirely?
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Chapter 7: Why is Munchausen by proxy difficult to diagnose?
Chapter 8: What support is available for victims of Munchausen by proxy?
Jordan mentioned that the real number of cases is likely much higher than what's officially reported or documented. But it left me with one pressing question.
Where is everyone? How does something this devastating happen over and over again and still go unnoticed by family, friends, even medical professionals? How does it slip through the cracks so easily?
The caregiver is often or the abuser is often reluctant to provide medical records or to provide information to people that might better explain what is going on with the victim. They might say like, oh, well, I've talked to this and this specialist and all these things. And then you read through the records and that never happened.
We see so, so, so often with our child cases, it's like dad is accused of sexual abuse. Dad is accused of domestic violence. Dad is put in jail or put somewhere typically charges at some point end up getting dropped. But not always. There'll be blackmailing. There will be all these different things that happen to isolate children.
the victim with the perpetrator so that it is just those two because then the abuse can keep happening. Then that victim doesn't know, doesn't think that there's anybody else, thinks that it's just me and mom against the world. It's just me and this person and we're fighting this together and all these things and is forced to rely on this person.
So it's harder to kind of come to the conclusion that there's danger. And another red flag that we've started to see, especially as The internet has become bigger is use of social media. That is actually very huge in these cases. I think Dr. Feldman helped with this term, but calling it munchausen by internet. And so in these cases, sometimes...
You'll see a lot of really disturbing posts or photos or things like that that are being posted on Facebook or on other online platforms that sometimes the abuser will act like they are the victim. And kind of speak from that lens of being the victim.
Or there will be a lot of sometimes pictures, really gruesome, like the pictures of the person in the hospital bed with all the tubes or all these different things. And doing these things to really elicit that sympathy and attention. And so the internet has really made things a lot easier.
more challenging in a lot of ways because obviously people can hop online and say anything they want and it can be really hard to know what to trust or to believe. It's also kind of helped sometimes in these cases being able to look at people's social media to be able to see all of the different things that are being posted.
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