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Dallas Mom Faked Illness, Made Healthy Son Endure 13 Surgeries, 323 Doctor Visits And Put Him In Wheelchair

By Louise Bonquin
Published on: 12:35 PST, Dec 14, 2017

Kaylene Bowen-Wright, a 34-year-old woman from Dallas, has been arrested for child abuse. She is now behind bars for making her son suffer after claiming he was very sick when he was not.

To make her drama believable, Kaylene had her son, Christopher, visit many pediatric doctors, at least 323 times in the past eight years. She also made him undergo multiple major surgeries, put him in a wheelchair, and even had him fitted with a feeding tube when he does not need them.

Kaylene Bowen-Wright gave birth to Christopher in April, 2009. According to Star-Telegram, the woman began her made-up story when Christopher was just 11-days-old. She began calling and bringing her son to doctors, less than two weeks after she gave birth.

She received many results from her check-ups and each one revealed that there is nothing wrong with her baby. However, despite the good results, she still continued to visit different pediatricians.

Then again, Ryan Crawford, Christopher’s father, disclosed that Kaylene actually started making up stories when she was still pregnant. As he stated in court, his former partner had a habit of calling him many times in the middle of the night and would tell him that she had been admitted to the hospital.

Ryan said that she gave him all sorts of fabricated reasons for the supposed hospitalizations. It came to a point when he started to wonder if her illnesses were true, or if she was lying just to get attention. The ex-couple only dated for a short time and did not live together or even know each other well.

Throughout Christopher’s young life, aside from his surgeries and numerous visits to doctors, his mother also made him wear and use an oxygen mask 24 hours a day. And around the time when the boy was fitted with a feeding tube, he suffered from multiple life-threatening blood infections since he was being fed directly to his small intestine.

“She was always saying Christopher was sick. Every single week, every single month,” Ryan Crawford said. He added that Kaylene would always say that something is wrong and that “He has this. He has that.”

Crawford wanted to somehow protect his son, so he tried to get help from the Dallas County family court. For a number of times, he told them that his son was healthy, but nobody seemed to care. He relayed that in 2012, a judge even forbade him from seeing his son.

Crawford’s moves and claims did not stop Kaylene Bowen-Wright from harming Christopher further. She now claimed that his son was dying, so she registered him on the lung transplant list in a hospital in Dallas. At first, the woman said that Christopher needed that transplant due to a genetic disorder, but later, she said it was because of cancer.

The police finally arrested Kaylene after Dallas hospital staff tipped off Child Protective Service workers (CPS) in November. The medical staff discovered that Christopher does not have cancer, or is in need of a lung transplant.

CBS News reported that this might be a case Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental health problem where the caregiver makes up an illness or causes an injury to a person under their care, in order to get sympathy, attention, or other benefits. Moreover, since the victims are usually vulnerable people, like children and the elderly, the disorder is considered a form of child abuse.

In Kaylene’s case, CPS determined that she cut her son’s hair, claimed he had cancer, took a photo of him wearing the “Make-A-Wish” shirt, and posted it on social media in order to raise money. These moves perfectly fit the description of someone with Munchausen syndrome, so Kaylene might really have this mental disorder.

Christopher Bowen’s life has been put in danger after his own mother made up stories, claiming he is very sick.

Kaylene Bowen-Wright is being held on a $150,000 bond after being charged with injury to a child with serious bodily harm.

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