Chapter 1: What shocking evidence did Andrea uncover about her sister's case?
True Story Media. Nobody Should Believe Me is a production of Large Media. That's L-A-R-J Media. Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse and this content may be difficult for some listeners. If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.
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People believe their eyes.
Chapter 2: How does Andrea feel about the judicial system's handling of Megan's children?
That's something that actually is so central to this whole issue and to people that experience this, is that we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me. This episode is going to be a departure from the Brittany Phillips case that we have been discussing all this season.
Today, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about my own story. A year ago, I submitted a public records request to the agencies who investigated my sister for medical child abuse of her younger daughter. In response to that request, I received multiple voluminous files and am in fact still receiving files,
including police reports, some of my sister's social media posts, nearly two years worth of emails between the investigating detective and various parties, as well as the court order dismissing the state's dependency petition. I've based today's episode on these documents, and we will share a link to them in today's show notes.
Because my sister named herself publicly by contacting the media, portraying herself as a parent who was falsely accused of medical child abuse, I feel it's especially important to use her real name today so that you can get a more complete picture of what happened in that case and the risks that children in these cases like my sister's face.
My sister, Megan Carter, was originally investigated 12 years ago on suspicions of medically abusing her then one-year-old son. My parents and I felt that those suspicions were warranted for all the reasons that I discussed in season one of this show. I also mentioned in season one that she had been investigated a second time for possible medical child abuse of her younger daughter.
Since season one, I've gone much deeper into what is in the public record about that investigation.
And during this period of the last three years of my life, I've spent a lot of it talking to experts about this form of abuse and what these patterns look like, including Detective Mike, who I'm going to talk to today, including people like Dr. Mark Feldman, Dr. Mary Sanders, Bea Yorker, all the other amazing people experts that we've had on this show.
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Chapter 3: What misleading article did Andrea and Mike discuss regarding Megan's case?
And looking at the records that I uncovered, I'm more convinced than ever that the system has utterly failed my niece and nephew. And as I've been digging into so many of these cases and hearing stories from survivors, from non-offending parents like the dads we talked to last season and a lot of other people that I've met since last season came out, I know now that the system fails most children.
in this situation and I feel really strongly that if we don't bring these failures to light, nothing will ever change. I was obviously very careful about what parts of my sister's story and my life I talked about. In season one, I really talked about the things that I was there for, right? So the pregnancy, the birth of her first child, that first investigation.
I've been out of my sister's life for 12 years now. So, I mean, there's a huge portion of her life that I have not been a witness to, except from a distance. Since I wrote the book, We Came Here to Forget, my novel, I feel like I've gone through this experience over and over again. I'm saying like, okay, that's it. I'm done talking about this.
But the reality is the situation isn't over and things continue to happen. And a lot has happened since my sister has been out of my life. things that we find out about are very distressing and everything that I have found out about since she has been out of my life has only pushed my fear one way and that's to make it worse.
Chapter 4: What role does video evidence play in medical child abuse cases?
I suppose I am sensitive about this narrative that I'm like out to get her or this is some kind of vendetta that this is just some personal thing that I'm sort of can't let go and I mean it's What I wish had happened in the interim is that something would have happened to change my mind.
What I wish is that some new information would come forward to explain all of these events that does not implicate her. But that's not what's happened. You know, what's happened in the interim is one of the things that we heard about a couple of years after the first investigation, and that, again, was the end of our contact with her by her choice,
was that she posted a picture on Facebook of herself in the hospital holding a baby that had died or was stillborn. And this was something that people who were still connected with her on Facebook told us about. And that was obviously really distressing. At this point, we believed nothing that we didn't have documentation for. So my mom looked that up in the county death records.
And in fact, that happened. She had a son who was born right around 24 weeks, which for those who are not as familiar with pregnancy and its weeks as I am having just gone through two, 24 weeks is about the line where a baby can survive outside the womb. And in fact, preemies do pretty well, all things considered, compared to like 10, 20 years ago. But this one, this one did pass away.
There was a death record.
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Chapter 5: What alarming patterns were found in the medical history of Megan's children?
So seven months after that, she had another baby. She was also born at 24 weeks. Of course, the timing of all that is notable. This is now the third baby she's had premature and they've sort of gotten increasingly premature. You know, we talked about the prevalence of premature babies in these cases.
And as with anything else that we talk about in these cases, gastrointestinal issues, breathing issues, seizure disorders. So none of these things are risk factors in and of themselves, but they are all a huge part of of the pattern of these cases. And I brought in Detective Mike Weber, who is the top law enforcement expert in the nation. He wrote the guidelines on this abuse for the FBI.
He is a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's Munchausen by Proxy Committee. He's really the guy to talk to about these investigations. And we talked through what I'd uncovered in my sister's case and specifically this thing about premature births. Can you talk about sort of the way we see that playing into these cases?
That's in Dr. Feldman's book, In Dying to Be Ill, where a mother actually admitted to inducing the premature birth.
Chapter 6: How did the judge's decision impact the custody of Megan's children?
And in, I think, the first five or six cases I worked, all of them included a premature birth. There's been cases where I've had evidence that the premature birth was induced and evidence by defendant's statements.
The reason I bring this up is my involvement with the second case against my sister that had to do with her younger daughter. The police detective, when they were investigating it, reached out to my father and because he had sent an email to the hospital with their concerns when a relative saw my niece on the hospital's like featured child page.
You know, they have those pages that are sort of for fundraising and they talk about the kids that are in the hospital. And so her daughter was listed there with a whole bunch of issues. And again, a family member saw it and brought it to our attention. And my father emailed the hospital to let them know that
We had had concerns about her older child and that there had been a previous investigation. And we had had concerns about Munchausen behavior previous to that, i.e. the fake pregnancy that I discussed in season one. So he had let them know. And so I believe that was how the detective probably got in touch with him.
So, Mike, one of the things you do when you're investigating a case is get in touch with family members, right?
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the media's portrayal of medical child abuse?
Like collateral interviews are a part of these investigations. So it makes perfect sense that the detective called Munchausen.
Well, correct. And, you know, the detective would have had access to all CPS records that, you know, if he's doing his job, which I'm sure he did, the CPS worker would have informed him that there's a previous case. Also, with this claim, he would have gotten that paperwork. He would have read it.
He would have seen y'all's concerns and he would have contacted y'all, which is exactly what happened. Yeah.
So my dad, my mother, and I had lengthy conversations with Detective Muse over the months that he was working on this case. But these related to her life before because we didn't know anything about her daughter, really, because we hadn't been there. I mean, we knew as much as anybody else basically had seen online at that point. This coincided somewhat.
It happened before my book came out, so I had not been in touch with, but the investigation lasted about two years. So at some point also, this was when I was really beginning to meet a lot of experts, such as Mark Feldman, such as Detective Mike. and really meet with the committee.
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Chapter 8: What final thoughts does Andrea have about the case and its broader implications?
And so as I met those experts, I, of course, offered to put them in touch with Detective Mews. And Mike, you are not at liberty to share what you discussed with him, but you did consult with Detective Mews towards the very tail end of this case. I want to be transparent about that. You are not at liberty, obviously, to share anything that's not in the public record already.
Right. I won't share what the conversations were. I will say that he did reach out to me. And I will tell you that that's pretty rare for a detective to do that. I've had numerous dads call me and they'll say there's open events. I'm like, we'll have to detect, reach out to me. Obviously, I cannot reach out to detectives. That would go horribly, terribly badly.
because they're going to think that I'm trying to stick my nose into their case. But I am always open to any detective reaching out to me, and I will offer any advice that I can as far as where the investigation should go.
Okay, so because there were no charges ultimately filed in this case, I was actually really surprised at how much information there is in the public record about this case. Part of that is because my sister went to the media with this story, which we'll get to. So she shared the family court judge's decision. So we have that.
And there are also the police reports, which we've mentioned are public record. And there's also an extensive amount of emails between the police detective, the district attorney, and several of the other people who were working on the investigation. What I have seen in this documentation is really alarming. Nothing I have seen in here convinces me that There was nothing to this investigation.
And the reason I want to make it public and the reason that I want to make my sister's name public, my sister's name is Megan Carter, is for a few reasons. The biggest being that everything I have seen about this case and also these patterns, which we have discussed, has made me feel very guilty. I feel very strongly that the system has failed here.
And in talking to both experts and survivors, one of the only things I feel that I can do Basically, going public as such and using her name is a kind of last resort. I have tried to talk to the detective. I tried to talk to the district attorney while this was going on. I tried to put them in touch with the resources that I had.
By the end of that investigation, that meant some of the best experts in the country on this topic. I've tried to follow up with the prosecuting attorney's office to figure out what happened here. And I've been told the same thing again and again and again. which is that they point me back to this family court judge's order, which is unbelievably flawed. And we'll get to that.
And one of the only things you can do when you feel you're in this situation is hope that by bringing light to it, there will be more eyes on that situation and more eyes on that child. And that is what I've been told over and over again by experts. And I spoke to some of the survivors that I'm really close with and asked them if I were your aunt. what would you want me to do?
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