A mother forced her 3-year-old daughter to undergo “unnecessary medical procedures,” according to Texas police and court documents, which say she dragged the girl to more than a dozen medical providers in Texas, Louisiana and Ohio.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) is asking anyone who has been in contact with Jessica Gasser, a 27-year-old Texas mother who was arrested last week on charges of medically abusing her young son, to present. The sheriff’s office said in a facebook post on Tuesday that Gasser’s case is an example of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), formerly called Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP), is a mental illness in which a person acts as if a person in their care has a physical or mental illness when the person is actually well , according to the Cleveland Clinicin Cleveland, Ohio.
Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital was one of the dozen medical providers listed on the probable cause affidavit as having seen the 3-year-old girl.
Tarrant County
TCSO Detective Michael Weber, the lead investigator on the case, was not available for comment at the time of publication Tuesday, a spokesman said. news week via email.
Gasser was arrested Friday following a months-long investigation into the allegations after suspicions were raised by health care workers on February 9, according to the arrest affidavit obtained by the local outlet. Star-Telegram. According to the document filed on July 11, he could face a felony charge of injury to a child. online records.
In February, a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) liaison to Cook Children’s Medical Center alerted the TCSO that a patient was a suspected victim of child medical abuse, Show the affidavit. DFPS liaison Robin Chavez told Weber that he investigated the suspect’s background and found that Gasser had previously been reported on suspicion of child medical abuse by at least two other Texas medical facilities.
Investigators say Gasser provided a false medical history to healthcare workers, prompting them to perform “numerous” procedures on the girl, including drawing blood 28 times from the girl. In one example noted in the document, the 3-year-old boy received a feeding tube in March because Gasser claimed the boy was not eating and was losing weight. Medical personnel alleged that the mother was tampering with the girl’s feeding tube, according to court documents.
TCSO said in the statement shared on Facebook that investigators aren’t sure how long the abuse had been going on, but said Gasser sent messages to a friend telling her to delete all her Facebook posts about her 3-year-old son’s health, including private ones. messages
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TCSO urges those who have had recent contact with the suspect through social media or text messages to call the sheriff’s office. Gasser has used the social media handle MedicalMamaJess and has thousands of followers, the TCSO said in a statement.
Multiple healthcare workers at various medical facilities in the three mentioned states told investigators that it appeared Gasser was “buying doctors to get what he wanted,” the affidavit says.
The affidavit also goes into detail about Gasser’s numerous posts on social media, saying she lied about the 3-year-old having rare and life-threatening medical conditions.
The Texas mother is also accused of taking advantage of a charity and its social media followers by seeking donations to cover unnecessary medical expenses.
Gasser had created a GoFundMe account to raise money to take her daughter to the Cleveland Clinic for treatment, the affidavit shows. The mother and daughter flew from Dallas to Cleveland via Miracle Flight, which offers free flights to children who need to travel to receive medical assistance and their guardians, in another example indicated in the court document. In the charity flight paperwork, Gasser said her daughter was diagnosed with gastroparesis, even though doctors at Children’s Medical Center Dallas and Dell Children’s Medical Center had told Gasser her young daughter did not have the rare condition, according to the sworn declaration.
In the few weeks after the victim was cared for by someone other than his mother, the child began to “grow” physically, the document says.