Outside court her lawyer, Bob Phillips, attempted to explain her behaviour. Phillips said McDonald was “under extreme psychological stress” at the time of her crime, stress he said was brought on by factors including fatigue and depression. He said that McDonald put faeces on her daughter’s catheter while the girl was hospitalised because McDonald sought to elevate the girl’s fever, something she had hoped would make doctors continue an antibiotics regimen that they had planned to end.
“Obviously it was a criminal act, and it was wrongheaded, but it was done with a pure heart,” Phillips said. Prosecutor Rob Drummond called McDonald’s behaviour “medical child abuse,” something he said is very rare. “It doesn’t have any other rationale than any other form of child abuse would have,” he said.
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McDonald has three children under the age of 10 who now live with their respective fathers, Phillips said. The girl victimized by the faeces is “thriving and well and going to be fine,” Phillips said.
3 comments:
It might have an entirely different rationale than child abuse. It might be Munchausen's (sp?) syndrome by proxy. A caretaker gets 'addicted' to the attention paid by others to their suffering child/parent/pet/whoever and harms them to get more attention. It's usually mothers and their children. It's abuse, but with a motive that's completely apart from the anger issues or other causes of physical or verbal abuse.
...either way, I hope she's getting psychiatric help.
I was thinking the same thing, blitherypoop. Sounds like Munchausen's to me, but what do I know?
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