Crown wants woman who poisoned son with salt-water injections, raw beef, chicken juice to serve seven years

Prosecutors are recommending a seven-year prison sentence for a Winnipeg mother who poisoned her young son with salt water for more than eight months and endangered his life under the noses of medical staff after he was hospitalized.

“She knew what was causing him to be sick and she said nothing to doctors,” Crown attorney Brett Rach told provincial court Judge Jerilee Ryle at a sentencing hearing Monday. “She sat at his bedside while she prolonged his suffering.… The acts were committed with a clear result in mind — to make him sick.”

The 29-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault. She cannot be named to protect the identity of her now eight-year-old son.

Court heard the woman has been diagnosed with factitious disorder imposed on another, a mental disorder previously referred to as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Factitious disorder imposed on another is a form of child abuse that occurs when a caregiver purposely makes a child ill or fabricates symptoms of illness and then seeks medical care.

The woman has also been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and has an IQ estimated to be between 75 and 85.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t regret what I did,” the woman told court. “I’m just glad that (my son) has the care and love of his dad to live on… I’m still trying to figure out why I did what I did and I want to make sure I never do this again.”

By the time the woman’s son was five, he had been hospitalized 21 times, admitted to the emergency department 29 times, logged “numerous” visits to his family doctor and medical specialists and had been diagnosed with 10 medical conditions.

According to an agreed statement of facts previously provided to court, Child and Family Services opened a file with the boy’s family in July 2017, and initiated a safety plan that required the child’s paternal grandmother to supervise him while his father was at work.

By 2019, health-care providers became concerned the boy’s repeated hospitalizations may have been due to factitious disorder imposed on another. In early 2020, Child and Family Services started placing support workers in the boy’s home during work hours. A psychological assessment around the same time recommended the boy’s mother complete specialized counselling, but due to the pandemic, she was unable to participate until the following October.

In February 2021, the boy was admitted to hospital for nausea, pain and vomiting.

“At that time, the episodes were undiagnosed, they were not fabricated or exaggerated and there was no evidence to support they were being induced,” says the agreed statement of facts.

In a subsequent text exchange with her husband, the woman referenced a “crystal substance” found under the boy’s nose and expressed concern doctors would blame her. “They are from the liquid meds, the antibiotics,” she said. “They will blame me for it.”

In November 2021, the boy was admitted to hospital seriously ill with suspected hypernatremia, which results from high concentrations of sodium in the blood.

The boy was treated and released but was back in hospital again in May 2022 suffering the same symptoms.

Over the course of nine days, the boy’s sodium levels spiked eight times and he underwent multiple medical procedures.

Medical staff agreed “salt toxicity needed to be considered” and barred the boy’s mother from attending the hospital. Over the course of a week, the boy’s sodium levels and health returned to normal.

In September 2022, the boy’s mother made a shocking disclosure to her now ex-husband: for eight months she had been using a syringe to shoot a salt solution up their son’s nose at night.

In an email to her husband in January 2023, the woman “admitted she did not do anything to (the boy) during the daytime because she was scared she would get caught.”

The woman said when the boy was hospitalized in February 2021, she would inject salt water into the boy’s nose when his grandmother was sleeping or in the bathroom and then hide the syringe in her bra. She also admitted feeding the boy raw beef and raw chicken juice and caused him to contract conjunctivitis after putting dishwater in his eye.

The woman’s ex-husband said their son’s bouts of sickness always occurred after he brought up the topic of divorce.

“Every time that moment came when I asked for a divorce, another strange illness would occur that would keep me stuck fighting for (our son),” the man said in a victim impact statement provided to court.

“I truly couldn’t believe a mom could be capable of harming their own child. She was playing a character to keep me in a specific mental state — stuck married to her and focussed on getting (our son) healthy.”

Defence lawyer Matt Raffey recommended the woman be sentenced to two years house arrest followed by three years supervised probation.

Raffey said the woman had a “difficult and traumatic” upbringing, was sexually abused as a child by two family members and experienced significant bullying.

The woman moved in with her future husband at 17, one day after her father was charged with sexually abusing children.

Raffey said the woman started giving her son salt after doctors told her his sodium levels were low. Later, when she thought doctors weren’t treating her son’s legitimate medical complaints seriously, she started “overfeeding” him salt in an effort to get doctors to examine him more thoroughly.

“She did not appreciate how dangerous her actions were,” Raffey said. “She knew it was making him sick, but she did not appreciate it could end in his death.”

Ryle will sentence the woman at a later date.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca