Have you ever heard of Munchhausen syndrome? You will now that Lacey Spears is making headlines. This mom has been arrested on suspicion of slowly poisoning her 5-year-old with sodium.
The motive? She wanted attention.
According to an article in the Huffington Post, for years Spears had been blogging about her son Garnett's courage in the face of ongoing mystery ailments. The 26-year-old mom from upstate New York has now been charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter, which could result in a sentence of 25 years to life.
Though Garnett had spent many periods in hospital during his young life, the source of his illness was only discovered after staff found Spears injecting sodium via a tube into his stomach in a hospital bathroom.
Spears had also conducted internet searches about the effects of vast quantities of salt on the body. Garnett died on January 23, whereupon his mother took to social media to confirm that "Garnett the great [had] journeyed onward."
Reports indicate that Spears may have been affected by Munchhausen syndrome, a psychiatric condition in which a parent induces sickness in a child to gain attention and/or sympathy.
"I'm happy they got her and I do believe that she's had this problem for years and that he's been suffering at her hands," said Ginger Dabbs-Anderson, a former nurse who met Garnett when he was a baby. "I really wish we could have prevented this because there were signs ... She put all over Facebook how wonderful she was. She had us all snowed, she had us all believing she was wonderful. But obviously not."
No one could believe this mother was acquitted of murder.
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