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Beata Kowalski (Take Care of Maya)
213 Plays2 months ago
This week on the Mothers of All Crime podcast we are talking about the documentary "Take Care of Maya". This documentary explores the trials and tribulations of the Kowalski family. Beata Kowalski is the mother in this case and we begin with her coping with her daughter's medical issues. The daughter, Maya, is receiving treatment which is helping her debilitating disease and when she is rushed to the ER during a terrible relapse the treatment and Beata's behavior draw a lot of negative attention. Child protective services intervene, Maya is taken into custody and the family ultimately suffers another horrible event. We are left to ponder if there was ANY truth behind the accusations lodged against Beata. This documentary is thought provoking and heart breaking. Listener discretion is advised.
May contain explicit language and unfounded accusations.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Topic
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Mothers of All Crime. This is a podcast where we deep dive into mothers involved in infamous crimes and scandals. I'm Monica and this is Crystal.
00:00:57
Speaker
Welcome back to the Mothers of All Crime. How are we doing, Crystal? I'm good. How are you? So, so good.
Personal Connection to 'Take Care of Maya'
00:01:05
Speaker
good um We're going to be talking about Take Care of Maya today, which is a Netflix documentary that I really enjoyed.
00:01:13
Speaker
What did you think? ah I got very invested in this one. more grant we're we get invested in all of them, but for this one, for some reason, it really hit different for me.
00:01:26
Speaker
And it's a newer documentary that came out twenty twenty three so in so it's very relevant. And I think that's part of it where we saw with like a history of some other big cases that have happened over the last couple years, how it impacted this one.
00:01:44
Speaker
More than I would have thought if this had happened maybe 10 years earlier.
Story and Characters: A Family's Journey
00:01:50
Speaker
So yeah, I got, there were a lot of feels in this one for me.
00:01:55
Speaker
A lot of What about you? Yeah, I thought. I don't want to call them characters, but the the main people involved, very, very compelling. You really felt for them.
00:02:06
Speaker
And it's such a unique, well, I guess it's not that unique, but it feels like such a unique, bizarre thing. And it's just you you go on a journey with the family and you really feel for them and you really root for them.
00:02:20
Speaker
And I don't always feel that watching these documentaries. So i was it was I got very invested as well. And I did a lot of like side Googling and stuff while watching it.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah. And again, anything when it comes to children, um i think that also hits a little harder, which definitely it shouldn't. Like human life is human life. But when it comes to kids and the kids' lives being affected, it it has a different impact, I think, because a they can't really speak up for themselves. And when they do, they're
Challenges in Children's Pain Articulation
00:02:58
Speaker
not taken seriously.
00:03:00
Speaker
yeah we have, oh, well, you're just a child or they don't know any better or these excuses or and they're not able to articulate how they're truly feeling. And I don't, I think Maya throughout, cause she did end up coming into the documentary at the end. Like she does a very good job of articulating herself. I think kids in general, when they are in pain,
00:03:24
Speaker
know how they're feeling they might not be able to describe the pain to you but they know that they're in pain and when people don't validate that I think it's a very dangerous slope just because they're a child like if an adult sits there and says I'm in pain they go okay let me address that and I don't think kids always are got the same respect when it comes to that kind of stuff i I definitely agree. And there was times watching this that I felt very frustrated.
Maya's Struggles and Family Challenges
00:03:52
Speaker
i mean, we deal with a lot of intense topics in this documentary from child abuse to a severely ill child to mental health issues, legal issues, self-harm, suicide. it's It's intense and it's heavy. And I agree. I thought Maya, who the documentary is center centered around as Maya Kowaloski.
00:04:14
Speaker
She's in the documentary, and I do think she does ah ah beautiful job explaining But you do see her get very emotional, obviously, talking about everything. And there's many videos also that show her at different ages in different levels of distress, which are hard to watch as well.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah. All right. So you want to kick us off um with little Maya? ah Yeah. So we, I mean, the documentary opens up with the dad, Jack, and the mom, Beata, and the daughter, Maya. They have a very nice family life. They seem like they have a beautiful home and they have good careers. And the mom is a nurse. The father is a firefighter. And he ends up retiring, spends a lot of time at home.
00:04:59
Speaker
Seems like they had a lot of fertility issues trying to have their first child, but they end up having Maya and they end up having her brother Kyle. And so they have this white picket fence, literally, and a nuclear home and, you know, everyone seems very happy and well.
00:05:16
Speaker
And then it kind of takes a turn when Maya starts having strange symptoms and dealing with a lot of health issues.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, and having a nurse for her mom, it really showed in the documentary. like She became very invested on making her daughter well. As any mother or parent would, they really started zoning in. And then she took extensive notes, did extensive research, trying to figure out what was wrong because she was in – Maya was in chronic pain all of the time.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah. And it the results of all of her diligence um came that Maya was diagnosed with, and I'm going CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.
00:06:05
Speaker
Exactly. Super neurological disease, and basically causes severe chronic debilitating pain. And it's really, really hard to manage that pain. Yeah.
00:06:19
Speaker
And again, like can I just said, now we have a small child, crazy pain, probably can't articulate it perfectly because I think she was around 10 when she got diagnosed. And her mom was just trying to get it. So her her daughter had a good quality of life and the U S just wasn't able to originally kind of maintain that minimal pain. So her daughter could be a kid.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it seems like the first few doctors they saw were totally brushing Maya and her mother off.
Skepticism and Hospital Staff's Doubts
00:06:54
Speaker
And they were trying to say that she had anxiety and that was causing all of her shortness of breath and her pain. And maybe she's exaggerating.
00:07:02
Speaker
it wasn't until they saw that like Dr. Kilpatrick that someone started to take them seriously. And you're right. they They tried to do some treatments in the States, but they didn't have a lot of success with it. She was doing really low doses of ketamine, which I think people know is like special K, like a party drug, but it's really a pain management thing too.
00:07:21
Speaker
And she was taking the low doses and it was not touching her pain. And CPRS is this strange disease where it feels like your skin is burning all of the time. Maya wasn't able to walk. She wasn't able to lift her hands. Her feet were completely turned in.
00:07:38
Speaker
it was extremely debilitating. So her parents were desperate, especially her mom. And they end up going to get a treatment that you can only get in Mexico called a ketamine coma, which sounds very terrifying.
00:07:54
Speaker
And it was very terrifying. She was just on extremely high doses of ketamine for six days, basically in a medically induced coma. And the crazy thing is it pretty much worked.
00:08:07
Speaker
She was way better after the coma. Her pain was a lot better. She did have some side effects, but it seems like it was a lot more manageable. And she had a lot more range of motion and she was having success in physical therapy and able to live her life and actually enjoy things. So it was a great success.
00:08:27
Speaker
And they were able to maintain her comfort and quality of life on much lower doses of ketamine. Um, So things were going pretty good until they I wasn't really sure what the relevance was, but they there was a hurricane in Florida, which happens all of the time in Florida.
00:08:47
Speaker
And during the hurricane, ah like, but did that have something to do with it? I was trying to look it up and it doesn't seem like it has any effect. But I don't know. I think it was just the timing. So i think it was the timing to give like the like viewers kind of a time reference because it was ah pretty significant hurricane and it's within the lifetime of a lot of people.
00:09:12
Speaker
But I also, and have nothing to back this up, wonder if it was just stress-inducing because she and Maya had that flare-up and I'm wondering if there's a connection when stress and anxiety to the flare-ups.
00:09:27
Speaker
I don't know if that's true, but that was my only other thought on how it could be relevant because I did the same thing and I was like, Um, it's aance like the barometric pressure.
00:09:38
Speaker
I don't know. Regardless, Beato is at work and the dad, Jack, is at home with Maya. She's having horrible pain, screaming in pain. I can't imagine dealing with that kind of a situation.
00:09:51
Speaker
um but Jack... like most people would do puts her in the car and takes her to the emergency room, which is, i think, pretty much always the right thing to do in that situation. Right.
00:10:03
Speaker
And so he takes her there and he's trying to explain at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital. He's trying to explain about her condition, about her doctors and about the treatment that she receives and has received and what she needs.
00:10:17
Speaker
And the doctors aren't really understanding and they're not They're not just immediately agreeing to do the treatment that she's gotten before and they're kind of skeptical and he calls Beata, puts her on the phone.
00:10:33
Speaker
She's barking instructions and no one's really liking that either. And she shows up about an hour later and the staff described her as belligerent, saying that she needs ketamine and you guys don't know what you're doing and stuff like that, basically.
00:10:49
Speaker
so It's a tense situation. Maya is very, very ill and her parents are desperately trying to get her medication that will help. And the hospital has some concerns.
00:11:01
Speaker
And that kind of brings us to the head of where this all starts take even a worse turn.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah.
Cultural Clashes and Misunderstandings
00:11:11
Speaker
And I think like Beata is also Eastern European, so she already has that kind of aggressive vibe to her from an American perspective anyway. Yeah.
00:11:22
Speaker
I think Eastern Europeans have a very beautiful language and presentation about themselves, but I think Americans sometimes take that as very aggressive when it's not meant to be aggressive. They're just very blunt.
00:11:36
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And I think her coming in already strong as the like parent wanting to help their child plus the Eastern European aggression vibe like compacted. And then you have the unfortunate like nurse versus doctor mentality sometimes where – this nurse is trying to tell me how to do my job and it being so rare, i could see where the doctors came from the, something doesn't feel right because you are asking for a very extreme treatment.
00:12:13
Speaker
But on the other hand, they have documentation from other doctors and the treatment that was done and the results of it, it kind of surprised me. There was so much pushback from the get go.
00:12:29
Speaker
Me too. i because So basically, the people that work at Johns Hopkins are suspicious that maybe Beata is exaggerating these symptoms, that she's unnecessarily drugging her, that she's over-medicating her, that's that maybe this is a situation of Munchausen by proxy or factitious disorder imposed on another.
00:12:53
Speaker
And if that was the case, then the investigation... should happen but it shouldn't stop at maya's parents because they're not the ones prescribing the ketamine so if this is something that shouldn't be prescribed to her and it's in unreasonable dosages and whatever it's like then that needs to be looked into on ah even a higher level because it's not like the parents are manufacturing the ketamine at home like they're getting it called into a walgreens and they're picking it up
00:13:23
Speaker
So right it seems weird to me that like we're just like, oh, well, you guys must have doctor shopped to find the solution. It's like, OK, but these are still real doctors that are currently practicing right now.
00:13:37
Speaker
So if they're doing something like that for no reason, then that needs to be investigated. It doesn't feel like that's what happened, though. Right. And you have, looking at some of the other cases that we've looked at with Munchauser, like, it was repetition of this, of, like, harm. you know what mean? Like, they would go to the doctors all the time for all these different things.
00:14:02
Speaker
And with Maya, she she hadn't been to a lot of doctors. She went to a couple until they figured out the diagnosis. But once she had the diagnosis, they didn't go much further than that.
00:14:15
Speaker
And I feel like with some of the other ones that we've looked at, they refused to accept diagnoses. It was like, no, that's not it or they wanted to collect all the diagnoses. When it came to Maya, once they had that diagnosis, they were like, okay, cool. Now how do we deal with it?
00:14:31
Speaker
And then that that was it. Which kind of, andt at least for me, countered that diet like the munch housing. You're not... shopping once they got an answer they were like okay let's manage cool versus like our other ones we've talked about they're like okay and that's great she has this diagnosis but what about this random thing that bothers her like you know what I mean there was always something more ah Yeah, it would be more. it would be, you know, not substantiated. And also with factitious disorder imposed on another or Munchausen, when the mother is not with the patient, they tend to improve, which is not what we're seeing here.
00:15:19
Speaker
And also even with like the ketamine coma and stuff like that, like there was so much supervision. There were so many other people involved. Like this is not just a child being medicated at home. And no one's watching it.
00:15:32
Speaker
And all of these symptoms. are I don't know. It's it's it all seems very weird the way that this was handled. And I feel like step one. They're aggressive.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah. Are these doctors not communicating with each other? It's like phones exist. Can we not get him on the get them on the line? Which we've had complaints about before. Yeah, it's like why don't they just talk to each other? I know. it is it is but is true. And it's of course everything's like hindsight, you know, 2020.
00:16:04
Speaker
of course. And in you do want to think that all of the medical staff at Johns Hopkins is just thinking of Maya's best interests. And there are people who...
00:16:16
Speaker
Fake medical problems on children and abuse them and do it for attention and do it for... i know And it's not uncommon for someone who suffers from Munchausen by proxy to be a medical professional.
00:16:29
Speaker
It's not uncommon at all or to at least have medical training and to use a lot of medical terminology, which Beata did as well. She wouldn't say... snot. She would say, you know, the technical terms for everything. She would say the medical words for everything.
00:16:44
Speaker
And I think that she was doing it because she is a nurse. So it is her profession. She does use these terms at work, but also because English isn't her first language. I think that sometimes when English isn't your first language, you don't always have 20 different words that you use for something when you're translating it to yourself.
00:17:05
Speaker
right and so her her she's not a she's not american she has an accent she's pushy she has medical training she acts like she knows everything and i think that that it basically like people were offended by how beata was acting and her husband would you know Maybe agree that she was being very pushy and very demanding.
Custody Battle and Family Distress
00:17:32
Speaker
And Maya's eventually taken into custody of the state. And Beata is not allowed to talk to her initially and is pressing to speak with her, calling, demanding to speak with her. And we just...
00:17:47
Speaker
you know, hear these recordings of Jack absolutely flipping out on Beata, telling her that she needs to drop it, that they're never going to get Maya back, that she's handling it completely wrong and making everything worse.
00:18:00
Speaker
And I feel a little conflicted ah ah about that. Um,
00:18:10
Speaker
I'm really not sure the right way to handle this situation because you don't want to just like take it lying down. But also is there a benefit to just also being more, I don't know, agreeable, willing to comply with certain things? She was not willing to comply with things.
00:18:32
Speaker
Not at the beginning. Yeah. Not at the beginning. I think she did. She set it down. A little bit, but she wouldn't sign the case plan and she didn't agree to anything. She did things that were like court orders so that she like had to do, but she didn't make it easy and she wasn't agreeable, which I'm not saying she needed to be and I can understand her position.
00:18:54
Speaker
But I think it makes it people less inclined to help you sometimes. Sure. And I think she was just angry because yeah they did it kind of behind the family's back.
00:19:05
Speaker
So the hospital social worker petitioned to the court without the family's knowledge to get a judge to sign shelter order, which basically put Maya in the custody of the state.
00:19:16
Speaker
And because of that, she ended up in the hospital for almost three months and assigned a social worker. And I think part of the problem I had, beside the fact of them kind of jumping the gun, but the social worker is really where I had my issue.
00:19:38
Speaker
Because i think it depends on the social worker's approach. Yeah. And I think this specific one, um i think her name was Bethy? Bethy Bethy? Bethy? Bethy? Bethy? Bethy? Bethy? Bethy Bethy? Bethy? Bethy Bethy? Bethy? Bethy? Bethy Bethy? Bethy Bethy? Bethy Yeah.
00:19:55
Speaker
Beady. I'm like, I know I'm going to pronounce it wrong. um I could just call her Kathy. ah Kathy. Yeah. A social worker who was doing their best to but like the goal of that.
00:20:10
Speaker
If there is no abuse is it like to do the investigation, find out the abuse. And if there isn't reunite the family. Yeah. Children and Family Services. Whole plan. and Kathy did not approach it that way.
00:20:23
Speaker
She very much became... and ah it kind of felt like she wanted to be maya's mom and like the best way to do that was to push out the parents and keep reiterating that she they were bad parents even to maya and i think that's really damaging and really toxic in that position i think if you had a social worker who was truly doing their investigation with the goal of reunification, if possible, in the best interest of the child, then Beata wouldn't, she would have calmed down quicker.
00:21:04
Speaker
Because I think she only calmed down because her husband basically looked at her his like and put things into full perspective of like, here is what happened is happening. Because I don't think she totally grasped the U.S. situation.
00:21:15
Speaker
DCF system. I don't think she totally understood the consequences of what she was doing until her husband sat down and was like, we could lose her forever if you don't cut it out.
00:21:26
Speaker
And that's when she kind of slowly stepped back. But this caseworker was like, They would have phone calls and she would terminate the calls early because of hypothetical medical issues or something she decided was inappropriate.
00:21:45
Speaker
She wouldn't let them even hold hands or come during the holidays. But then she would have crossed physical boundaries where... Maya would be like, no, like, let me move on my own. And she would, like, pick Maya up and move her afternoon. Like, there are reports of Maya screaming no while she was, like, forcibly moved around the hospital by the caseworker.
00:22:08
Speaker
She is reportedly crawling into the bed and hugging Maya quietly. Again, and Maya's like, please don't touch me. You're a stranger to me. Like, there's some serious boundary violations um or, like, being asked to call be called Mama Kathy or, like, all these crazy things that I think – If there was a different social worker, it would have ended differently.
00:22:33
Speaker
i have a lot of problems with this caseworker, clearly. Definitely. And i I think it's super justified. And Maya even said she said that, um well, I mean, this is just Maya's version of what happened. But she said that Kathy would tell her that she was going to adopt her because her mom was never going to get her back.
00:22:53
Speaker
That's crazy inappropriate.
Isolation and Social Worker Overreach
00:22:57
Speaker
To a child that is so vulnerable, who is medically fragile, who is trapped in a hospital, who has no access to her parents, her extended family, her friends. She has no one.
00:23:10
Speaker
And she's just stuck in the hospital. She's scared. And you're telling her that you're going to adopt her? Like, that's also, even if her parents lost custody forever, the social worker doesn't just get to take the kids home. That's not really how it works.
00:23:27
Speaker
So it's crazy to say that because let's say that was comforting to Maya. It's just not true. Also, you're not going to just get her. So I feel like she was overstepping boundaries. She was being inappropriate.
00:23:39
Speaker
she I don't know, had some sort of fixation with Maya or she's crossing a lot of boundaries in general with her work. I mean, I don't know about her other cases and how she treated other kids that she was responsible for, but I thought that was all very creepy.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, and then through, like, they started digging into the case where, because the family felt like it was creepy, too. They're like, something's not right with this woman. and And turns out she had her own CPS investigation against her. Yeah, that's right. And things got dropped.
00:24:13
Speaker
But regardless, in my opinion, if you have a child abuse charge against you you should not be a able to be a child like protector you shouldn't be able to work for cps yeah like or dcf or whatever acronym you want to choose same way in my opinion of like if you are a doctor and accused of killing someone on purpose guess what you shouldn't be a doctor anymore like If you, anything that counters the attorney, if you all of a sudden share private information, you shouldn't be an attorney anymore. i'm Like that should be consistent in every field.
00:24:54
Speaker
And the fact this woman had the exact same investigation on her that she's now doing on someone else, I think is insane. Insane. insane
00:25:06
Speaker
yeah I definitely agree. She was a wackadoodle and she made everything worse. And I thought she was extreme. I mean, obviously, we only heard some of the clips of the phone calls between Beata and Maya.
00:25:19
Speaker
They really did not seem bad at all. What are you supposed to talk about? Like, she wasn't, they weren't allowed to talk about the case. They weren't allowed to talk about Maya's health. They weren't allowed to talk about pretty much Beata's feelings about anything.
00:25:33
Speaker
So, like. Either of their opinions, their family, like, nothing. So, it's, that's a lot of the topics. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like the kid's not in school because she's in the fucking hospital.
00:25:46
Speaker
She's not in sports. She's not at clubs. She's not seeing her friends. She's not doing anything. So what are you supposed to talk about? hmm.
00:25:58
Speaker
Holidays are coming out You don't want to set her. so you're going to talk about the holidays. Yeah, and exactly. And I feel like Beata was getting in trouble when they were talking about Thanksgiving, too, that her Thanksgiving was a bummer. Okay, but you also shouldn't be like, yeah, was the best Thanksgiving ever when your kid's in the hospital and you didn't see her Like, yeah, it's normal to say it wasn't a good Thanksgiving for the family. Everybody was pretty worried about you.
00:26:21
Speaker
That's yeah. I don't know. i don't know what I don't know what they were supposed to be able to talk about. They should have had them read the same book or something so they could talk about it together. Because all of the topics that would naturally come up, they were not allowed to discuss.
00:26:36
Speaker
Which I think is bizarre. and and then Even on like things that they were allowed to talk about, she would like interject, which I thought was weird. um Yeah.
00:26:48
Speaker
But either way. You're supposed be supervising. investigation kept going and they really kept going harder and harder. They wanted them to engage in this family um plan and they wanted...
00:27:05
Speaker
Pretty much them to admit that they were wrong. During one of the clips that they played for an interview with ah Maya's dad, they basically presented the idea in better wording, but...
00:27:20
Speaker
were you involved or were you complicit? Like they didn't give him the option of, they very much were focused on Beata. Like she was the abuser and they presented it to him of like, were you complicit in this behavior or were you involved in the behavior?
00:27:36
Speaker
And he was like, no, but the fact that they didn't, It was a very, you're going to pick which way your wife was the abuser is kind of how they presented it, which is gross.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah. They really wanted him to say, too, that if mull ah if Maya got released to his custody, that he'd be willing to keep her away from from ah her mother, um which is pretty typical in cases like this.
00:28:07
Speaker
And ah does make sense under a lot of circumstances. And that's the thing that's so hard with watching this because in so many cases that we've covered, especially on this podcast, obviously with our topic in mind, there is child abuse going on.
00:28:26
Speaker
And so you would do everything you could to keep the child separated from their abusive parent in that situation. It does not feel like it's coming from a genuine place.
00:28:37
Speaker
in this situation, but I could understand wanting to gauge how willing Jack would be to keep them separated. And is Jack really a threat or is he willing to work with us and he's not abusive? So maybe just the mom is the problem and maybe this kid can be released into someone else's custody.
00:28:56
Speaker
And this is the way we're going to get reunification.
Visitation and Legal Struggles
00:29:00
Speaker
um But it also does tear the family apart. So yeah, in cases of false allegations of child abuse, which is my ultimate opinion of this situation, um then it's it's so damaging in another way, too, because it forces him to take sides.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But so Jack eventually did get limited supervised visits with Maya, which I think were so important because this little girl was alone for a very long time.
00:29:36
Speaker
And... Like, as a grown adult, being alone in the hospital is scary and sad and crazy. Like, let alone being a child.
00:29:49
Speaker
So, um I'm glad that they kind of did what they had to do for him to get some kind of visit with him. Even though Beata was still completely allowed to, like, have any physical contact with her.
00:30:03
Speaker
At least... She had a parent. Like at least someone was able to get in there, which I think is so important. But we then kind of started to see the deterioration of Beata's strength and her fight and her faith that things were going be okay. Yeah.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, she was saying that she, you know, wouldn't be able to live under these sick situations. That's what she's writing in response, in emails.
00:30:38
Speaker
um After Kathy, you know, accused Beata damaging Maya via phone calls, trying to get the phone calls terminated, she was losing hope.
00:30:49
Speaker
And then they had a um a day in court and Beata had asked if she could just hug Maya because she was there and she said no.
00:31:00
Speaker
I mean, the judge said no. He said no. So they weren't allowed to hug and it was just completely devastating for Beata. She was having... A very, very strong reaction. And i think we forgot to mention before that she did get a psychological evaluation by court order, and she had no evidence of having Munchausen by proxy or any other pathological illness like that.
00:31:26
Speaker
She just was – she apparently had an adjustment disorder and was depressed because her daughter had been taken into state custody, which I think is actually a pretty normal reaction and that situation. if you didn't have that, that would be a bigger red flag.
00:31:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's not that's not an illness. That's not That's a it's a normal reaction to the situation that you're in The very real possibility that you're going to be charged with child abuse, that you are going to lose custody of your child forever.
00:31:57
Speaker
that And also, when someone is a nurse and has ah license and practices with patients... They're also held to different standards when it comes to work. And so even if she didn't go to prison for child abuse charges, if she was charged and convicted or even charged and they're pending and she's going through these court battles and stuff, she could lose her license and be ineligible to practice, lose her livelihood.
00:32:23
Speaker
the bills are racking up legal fees, medical bills. They're on the verge of bankruptcy. Marriage is yeah falling apart. I mean, this is this is some pretty bad, terrible, dire circumstances. And I think, obviously, this was just like the last straw for Beata. And she really she just she could not handle the situation that she was in anymore. Yeah.
Tragedy Strikes: Mother's Suicide
00:32:52
Speaker
So Maya is in state custody for 87 days and Beata was supposed to go to a birthday party with Jack and their son, Kyle, but she said that she had a migraine and wasn't going to go. So she just, you know, wrapped the gifts and the boys went to the party and they came back and the bedroom door is closed. So they just thought, okay,
00:33:17
Speaker
that she was sleeping and Beata's brother ended up coming over to the house and makes a horrific discovery, that Beata had committed suicide and she was in the garage and there's a terrible 911 call.
00:33:35
Speaker
absolutely heartbreaking. And it's just so, it's so, so devastating. Um,
00:33:44
Speaker
yeah like a tragedy ah tragic loss and afterwards they found letters that she had written to the judge and to the family apologizing to the family giving instructions taking care please take care of my uh you know all of this stuff and then to the judge it's it's pretty harsh and saying that like you've ruined our lives and like you're part of this terrible mechanism that's destroying us and torturing my child and she's in constant pain because of this situation and you know everything is just so so bad and beada and a lot of the other people in this documentary pretty much blame the judge completely what happened which it's not completely the judge's fault but i could see how
00:34:36
Speaker
I could see how this all happened and how this escalated to such a terrible conclusion.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah. and But like, ah she kind of got to a point where she didn't think there were any other options that she was, she was the problem and the best way to protect her daughter and get her daughter back where she needed to be was that she wasn't there anymore.
00:35:00
Speaker
And how do you kind of in from her perspective, how do you live knowing you can never see your daughter again? And i I see how she got felt like she was backed in a corner and then to kind of support her mindset shortly after her death, the order was lifted and Maya was returned to home.
00:35:25
Speaker
like yeah so it did kind of work it did work in in a terrible terrible result she did get her daughter back into the safety of her family and really brought light onto the devastating consequences of jumping a gun and getting We've said time and time again, once that DCF or CPS or whatever agency is local, once they're involved in your life, they never truly go away. Just because the case is closed doesn't mean they don't check up on you. Doesn't mean they show up once in a while. Like it's, it's a really terrible, but it's one of the few things in our system where you are not yeah innocent i until proven guilty. And that system, you are guilty until proven innocent.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah. And in the cases that are real and actually happening, 100%, we should be stringent, we should be safe, you should always proceed on the side of caution, but at what point is there a middle ground?
00:36:35
Speaker
Our justice system is, in a sense, I'm proven guilty. How is it when... And you're so easily flipped when it's your own children.
00:36:48
Speaker
Like people joke all the time that you don't need to take a test to have a kid. Like you just you go get pregnant, have the baby and you go home. Like they just there's no test on who's a good parent.
00:37:02
Speaker
who if you aren't going to judge people in the hospital having their baby how do you judge someone after they've already had them you know mean like it's a weird i don't think any system in our country is good and perfect but it feels like this one has more flaws than others it's so it's so tricky and the part of the problem is that you never really know what goes on behind closed doors and like what families are like when no one is watching.
00:37:33
Speaker
So it's a lot of going with your gut and building cases and trying to figure it out as you go But at the time of the investigation, real people, their real lives, their real families absolutely being torn apart.
00:37:48
Speaker
And you never really recover from this. Like financially, financially, mentally, emotionally, the consequences can be generational. And yeah it's, there's such a high burden and standard because it's also, you don't want to be the social worker, the judge, the cops that let a child stay in a situation where they are ultimately abused further, murdered, you know, terrible, terrible,
00:38:19
Speaker
the stakes are as high as they can be pretty much. Um, and there's, you don't want to send a kid into a bad situation. and And I feel like right now we could talk about obviously Dr. Sally Smith and the whole system. And is there an extremely high, um number of medical child abuse cases at this one hospital where it statistically doesn't even seem possible that there could be this many.
00:38:46
Speaker
Sure. But just in general too, I think that this is a hot topic at the moment and it's something that we've become much more aware of. And, you know, certain cases like with Gypsy Rose Blanchard and with Natalia Grace and with like these very high profile cases where are they lying? Are they faking it? Are these medical conditions real?
00:39:11
Speaker
it It changes the way we think about it it. changes the way the system looks at it. And is it better to take a kid out and do an investigation where they're removed from the people that are potentially hurting them? Or is that even more damaging to not just the child, but everybody else too?
00:39:30
Speaker
Clearly the parents get extremely damaged by this as well.
Aftermath: Emotional and Legal Repercussions
00:39:33
Speaker
And I think that for someone who is innocent, who I believe Beata was totally innocent, this would be so devastating and you would feel like every single decision that you've made was the wrong one and that you're just a barrier to the daughter even getting help because the whole time the mother's being investigated she's not getting appropriate treatment and so the stakes are incredibly high for everybody and i don't know what the solution is because there's no you can't just hit pause on time and like freeze time and
00:40:08
Speaker
just wait and see what happens. You, you have to act. And I think for, it's probably usually better to take a child out of a situation while you investigate, but it just for the people who happen to be innocent, it's obviously horrific.
00:40:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah. No, it's, it's very sad. And, um, and kind of fast forwarding little bit. yeah The case, they did, the Kowalski's ended up opening case against John Hopkins.
Lawsuit and Systemic Issues
00:40:42
Speaker
And that, and also was traumatic in itself because no, you're going up against a multimillion dollar corporation where they have attorneys, A, already on um retainer, but they have the money to draw it out.
00:41:03
Speaker
which is where we see a lot of families... they They stop because they can't afford to fight anymore from a financial perspective. Attorneys aren't cheap, let alone ones that are willing to take on one of the largest hospitals in the area.
00:41:19
Speaker
um And they kept pushing back and the case got pushed back and pushed back. And that's traumatic on the family in itself because you're constantly living and reliving something that was very traumatic for you guys. Yeah.
00:41:34
Speaker
So we saw that kind of towards the end, their processing and their battle. and But one thing that was good about beata is she wrote down everything she was so meticulous about meticulous there we go yeah um i was like that's not the right word ah she was like very detail oriented every single conversation every single doctor every question everything
00:42:07
Speaker
Which really made the ability to show where the doctors were not being truthful or thorough or whatever the case is. And that's how they ended up eventually winning that case.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah. Which came out, um I think November of 2023 is the final verdict came out. Yes. um Well, like I said this before, I think, but Beata refused to sign any of the case plans that were offered to her.
00:42:36
Speaker
And that preserved the ability to sue the hospital because the hospital had not been released from liability. And Dr. Smith had not been released from liability. And so they were able to sue for damages and punitive damages, which is when you get like a very big settlement.
00:42:51
Speaker
um I think it also helped that so many other families came out of the woodwork with very similar situations and um And it was heartbreaking and terrible for the family to go through these lawsuits. They were ultimately, well, they were initially awarded $261 million, dollars and then it was reduced to forty seven and a half million dollars which It's a lot of money.
00:43:21
Speaker
couldn't find the reasoning for the reduction because they had $211 million for Maya, um specifically for medical medical negligence, international infliction of, intentional affliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment.
00:43:39
Speaker
and And then Jack got the $50 million, emotional distress, suffering, wrongful death of his wife. Which yeah all feels valid. I mean, that it that all that really all did happen.
00:43:52
Speaker
um So it says my notes say that there was a remitter, um which is, i just looked it up, a trial court order in response to an excessive damage award or verdict by a jury, which gives the plaintiff the option to accept a reduced damage award or conviction.
00:44:12
Speaker
So I think it it's almost like they took a plea or something like the, they I guess the hospital, like that they wouldn't actually be able to do 261 So they were able to,
00:44:26
Speaker
appeal it just the amount and get a reduction that's it's the plaintiff requesting it though
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. didn't find anything on it. um Everything that I found was still at the... Because it was a jury verdict. um But I generally don't know. hope they got 260. I don't think so. think got the 47. Yeah, see. I'm just double checking it. That the...
00:44:55
Speaker
i think they got the forty seven
00:45:03
Speaker
yeah i see i'm i'm just doublecheing it that the Appeal was put in, but I don't see the appeal being accepted anywhere.
00:45:16
Speaker
Either way, i mean, it's life-changing money at the end of the day. definitely. you're never going to have the a number that brings back your mom. You're never going to have a number that brings back your wife.
00:45:28
Speaker
You're never going to be able to fill that void. It's just the reality. It's not going to happen. But having the case end does bring that ability to have closure of yeah that chapter.
00:45:43
Speaker
And that's a long chapter to be suffering. Yeah. And over time, now that the case is over, you're really able to start healing because you can't heal when you're constantly being
Documentary Impact
00:45:54
Speaker
deposed. You can't heal when you're waiting on a court result. You can't heal like this finally gives the family the ability to slowly try to rebuild themselves because you're never going to move on.
00:46:09
Speaker
But you can start to build and live life that Yada would have wanted them all to live.
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I, I hope that this has brought some closure for the family. Um, and I hope that they're able to rebuild their lives. It seems like Maya's doing pretty well, all things considered.
00:46:36
Speaker
She's done a ton of physical therapy and she can walk now. She's not in the wheelchair, but she, mean, she still has some like physical limitations and it's, it seems to be a lifelong condition. Like she's not going to just yeah she's she's magically Yeah.
00:46:50
Speaker
yeah One of the, oh my gosh, one of the things that, i don't I don't think we said this, that was so infuriating to me was that the hospital was billing her insurance for CPRS treatments for three months while.
00:47:06
Speaker
While telling the bitch she didn't have it. Yeah. While saying the parents were faking it and that it was child abuse. Okay. But then why are you treating it if it's like a made up disease?
00:47:17
Speaker
So fury, and infuriating. Infuriating. I feel like it's such a scam. It's so terrible that one doctor has a wild vendetta and she has a. Astronomic amount of medical child abuse cases that she's uncovered in her career, and that's a whole other but you know what She would probably make a very good episode on her own as well.
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, digging into that and because I didn't realize because they started showing people around the country in the end of this documentary. and all tracing back to her so exactly that's a good point because it's not like all of these people that they started mentioning were just people in florida like we saw massachusetts california california ohio like around the country all some were imprisoned some are still in prison
00:48:15
Speaker
like lives destroyed all because of this one woman it is very interesting and i'm sure sometimes she was correct about medical child abuse taking place but just statistically it can't be possible that she's uncovered it this many times does not make sense every one of your patients was abused It's wild. I mean, if anything, that is a big red flag in itself that everyone you come into contact with is medically abusing their kids. It just doesn't seem, it does not seem possible.
00:48:49
Speaker
But I think that would be like a interesting deep dive to do. Yeah. yeah ah Do you have any final thoughts about this documentary? No, I definitely suggest watching it if you guys haven't yet because,
00:49:02
Speaker
We watch a lot of them, but this was one of the ones that it hit a little different and it was presented in a very nice way. I really enjoyed the way that the producers put it together. And i ended up having to watch it more than once because the first time I just got really engrossed in it and wasn't really able to like – separate myself as much as I normally do. ah Because I think it just really shows the possibility and the dangers of people who don't fully look into things or abuse power or it it really can show how damaging words and accusations can really be.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah. i I definitely agree. What about you? No, it was an interesting case. I feel like it's good ah it's good to keep in mind that people can be falsely accused of things um and that an accusation does not mean that you're guilty, even though I feel like we've kind of gone back and forth about that a little bit, about like how strongly we need to treat accusations and how that's like so important to treat accusations seriously, but also sometimes they're incorrect. People can lie Things can be misinterpreted. confusion like There's all kinds of circumstances that can happen. I think it's just interesting for us to like take a departure where it's this mother was accused of heinous, horrible things, but...
00:50:36
Speaker
we don't think that she did it and sometimes people are falsely accused and there can still be really big terrible consequences and yeah I found it a moving documentary I feel like I i learned things felt things and yeah I enjoy it I would recommend a watch as well yeah well that was Miss Maya again the documentary is on Netflix and it's an it's an easy watch too which I like Yeah, I really liked it. All right. Well, we'll pick up back here next week with our next mother.
00:51:12
Speaker
Till next time. Bye.