Mother Allegedly Subjected Healthy 8-Year-Old Son to Multiple Doctor Visits, Surgeries

A 34-year-old mother named Kaylene Bowen-Wright is in jail on charges of injury to a child with serious bodily harm. At the time of her arrest, Bowen-Wright’s 8-year-old son was on oxygen, a feeding tube and medication to regulate seizures according to a report by PEOPLE, and he had no need of any of it.

Bowen-Wright has been under investigation since last month. She brought her son to a hospital in Dallas to be treated for a seizure, but medical staff say the boy was shaking violently with no apparent signs of an actual seizure.

Doctors contacted Child Protective Services, afraid that the boy’s symptoms were being caused intentionally. Some staff members at the hospital told officials they believed that Bowen-Wright was inducing the symptoms in her son, though no evidence was found to back that up.

Child Protective Services supplied reporters at People with documents concerning Bowen-Wright’s case. They believe she has a rare mental illness known as Munchausen by proxy, where a parent or guardian has endless delusions of illness for their child. The result was a lifetime of abuse for her son.

Detectives believe Bowen-Wright has been abusing her son since 11 days after his birth in 2009. In that time, he’s been to 323 doctor visits, at hospitals and medical facilities in both Dallas and Houston, according to the documents provided by CPS.

Bowen-Wright has allegedly told people that her son had cancer, confined him to a wheelchair, entered him into hospice care, and even put his name on the waiting list for a lung transplant. Two years ago, she successfully ran an online fundraiser for her son, claiming that he had a rare blood vessel illness called arteriovenous malformation. She raised $8,000.

Multiple doctors have confirmed that Bowen-Wright’s son is healthy, and most if not all of the procedures he underwent were completely pointless. In addition, the feeding tube Bowen-Wright had her son on caused three different blood infections, which were life-threatening.

The child’s father, Ryan Crawford, said he had been suspicious of abuse for years. He said that he had tried to convince judges that Bowen-Wright was lying about their son’s health many times, but they always sided with her.

As for the child’s condition now that he’s been separated from his mother, Crawford says it’ll take some time to heal.

“Obviously mentally, he’s going to need some counseling,” Crawford said. “But he is so sweet, so nice, so playful.”