YWN Israel on Sunday morning received information pertaining to the case of the so-called Munchausen mom, information released by an extremely reliable source who is very involved in the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
YWN has learned that the representatives of the family tried in earnest to have the child taken out of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, apparently tied to accusations that the hospital is acting in cahoots with police, acting against the interests of the family. The court on Friday adamantly refused, confident the child is receiving excellent care, dismissing allegations against the hospital or members of the medical team.
While the chareidi media is claiming “success” by the court’s release of the mother to house arrest, YWN has learned the release to house arrest is accompanied by a number of conditions. As was reported earlier, the release was subject to NIS 450,000 bail. In addition, the mother is not permitted to see any of her other children. She is also going to undergo psychiatric evaluation this week, and here too, the court rejected demands to disqualify state psychiatric officials, eventually reaching a compromise between the state and family regarding a psychiatrist on staff in the Jerusalem District office. The family tried everything at its disposal to avoid having the mother undergo psychiatric testing but realized at this stage, they have no alternative.
YWN has also learned that the father is originally from the UK, explaining the state’s concerns the family will flee the country. He is presently in hiding along with the other children, who police wish to question regarding fears of abuse/neglect by the mother as well.
Family members of the hospitalized child remains with him round-the-clock, and hospital officials comment he is never alone, aware there are many around him who love and care for him dearly.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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30 Responses
One has to compare the secular state’s actions with other democracies: Would America handle a case this way?
the release was subject to NIS 450,000 bail! would please inform your readers who was the ones to take responsibilty on the bail. why are all media outlets noting it but not YW?
He is presently in hiding?? WOW! every1 on London can saw him on the street or in the shuls, but YW, for some reason chsoe to make the story more dramatic and follow their guider “THE SHTURMER”
The fact that the State won’t allow an independent psychiatric evaluation is very, very suspicious.
If the father is from the UK, then the child is a British subject as well. The family should request that the child be removed to Britain for treatment by a “neutral” doctor.
If the Israeli government refuses, this would prove once and for all, that the whole affair was a “set up” by the zionists and is probably either a cover-up of serious malpractice by Hadassah Hospital, or retaliation against the family for political reasons (earlier reports in secular media said the mother was associated with the anti-zionist Neturei Karta, and the zionists may be staging this in retaliation for Neturei Karta’s meeting with Hamas).
Munchhausen Syndrome is extremely difficult to prove as there must be direct evidence (usually videotaped or photographed surreptitiously) of the mother physically harming the child. For her to have been arrested and accused indicates that the authorities have extraordinary evidence against her.
This article still doesn’t tell the reader what’s going on and what actually is happening or happened, to many back and forths at this point nobody knows who and what to believe.
What family members are with the child? They are possible material witnesses as to where the father and the other children are. They are subject to arrest as material witnesses and can be ordered by a court to disclose the whereabouts of the father, whoc cold himself be subject to negelct charges. Additionally, why is the mother relectant to undergo a psychiatric evaulation? After all, she always has the option of hiring her own expert to contradict the state’s expert. Something in this report does not add up.
#1 – In the United States the judiciary is independent of the executive, is bi-partisan (note that there are judges from all parties, unlike Israel where judges are drawn almost entirely from the left-wing secular elites), and is kept in check by the jury system. In other countries (Russia, China, Iran, etc.) where the judiciary is connected to the executive and see their role as helping the government keep things under control, the results will be similar. Assusing dissidents (and Hareidim are, from a zionist perspective, very dissident) of mental illness is a well established custom.
What you should ask is what would have happened in Mississipi in the 1920s if the police accused a Black (“Colored” as they were called back then) civil rights activist of child abuse. Hareidim to contemporary Israel stand in a position similar to Blacks under Jim Crow.
cantor, you are really, really unfamiliar with Israeli law system.
What you assume to be “options” are wishful thinking on your part.
#5 that has got to be the stupidest thing you’ve every written. No sovereign nation is obligated to cede it’s jurisdiction over a citizen. Israel is a western democracy, a sovereign nation with all the authority that accompanies the establishment of such a government. A fringe group of crazies has no right to derail that system; which is precisely what you suggest.
#10, I’m not an Israeli lawyer, but I am familiar with general principles of law. Additionally, I have been involved in a number of cases involving Israeli courts which put me in consct with Israeli attorneys. I know I’m right.
#11 — Israel is a western democracy??????
Between 10 and 25 per cent of Israel is Hareidi.
Zero percent of Israeli judges and prosecutors are Hareidi. Israel is as much a western democracy as Alabama was in the 1920s (at least if you happened to be black). Perhaps we should even discuss Germany in the late 1930s – members of the majority group who didn’t make trouble for the government had their rights respected. In democracies, fringe groups of citizens have every right to derail the system – that’s what “rule of law” and democracy are all about. In countries that aren’t democracies, the courts role is to keep the fringe groups in line.
This story has lots of holes in it.
The mother apparently was not at the childs bedside for three weeks prior to her arrest, as per the suggestion of the Welfare office that she takes a vacation.
If the mother was harming the child, why in those 3 weeks did the child not gain significant weight? Why under the ‘care’ of the Dr’s did they not address the issue, and nurse the child back to health?
Why only after the mother was arrested was the child reportedly doing better? Has anyone independently confirmed the condition of the child, or we are relying on those same Dr’s.
The child was hospitalized for months at a time, leaving it impossible for the mother to ‘abuse’ the child.
It is obvious that this story is an agenda by someone against this mother. Kudos to Klal Yisroel for supporting her, and acting in whatever means necessary to teach the govt a lesson.
This is the same gov’t that sold yemenite children, conducted medical experiments on unsuspecting victims, and continues to look down on the whole chareidi sector of society.
The child was abused. Fact.
By who?
The last six months he has been in H.E.K. Oncology ward where he recieved abuse.
However much the mother was there,it is very uunlikly she was the abuser, she has no access to the medecine closet & couldn’t prescribe & administer faulse medecine.
The baby is in a ward [public place] what could she have been doing without getting caught for six months?
after she took a lawyer to fight the abuse & possibly move her child to Great Aumen Street Children’s hospital in London, where they will find the abuse & the doctors will have what & who to answer too. They fabricate a story & arrest the mother so she can’t leave with her child.
So those doctors[not all of them] who are experimenting on a child, to save their skin, fabricate a story on the poor suffering pregnant ‘CHAREIDI” mother.
The amount of wholes in the story are enough for any laidigeir to see.
1) Oncology ward 6 months= Doctors incompetance if it would be M..s By proxy.What took so long, they do blood tests?
2) Picture of kid in newspaper Ilegal by international law, but permitted to fabricate against chareidi mother.
3) No picture of mother removing tube in Newspaper.
4) Hospital ward not private room.
5) The trick & form of arrest.
6) Them trying to force her to use their phsycologist who has already diagnosed her, B4 seeing her.
7)How could the hair fall out, without chemo?
8) Where would she get a drug that does that, for six months & doesn’t show up in a blood test.
9) These questions are just from the story the hospital tells a laymen. If I were a doctor & had the papers. Boy would they be in trouble.
They want her locked up until they can destroy any evidence & Chas veshalom the kid. they we don’t do Nituchei Meisim, the fight over here is pikuach nefesh & Pidyon Shevuyin mamash.
The kid must be moved to London now.
This is my humble opinion.
#11 how many chareidim have applied to be judges in the non Beth Din courts in Israel?
Here is a letter I received today from a local woman “Mrs. Markowitz” –
Reading and listening to all the back and the forth regarding the latest libel in a country known for its severe bias towards the religious since its inception, I feel an urge to put pen to paper to try to sort out the thoughts of those honestly seeking clarification in regard to the so called “chariedi violence”.
What amazes me more than anything else is the way naïve chareidim will buy anything that the secular media has to sell. I keep hearing over and over, “the mother is ill,” “she starved her child,” “she pulled out his feeding tube,” among other things. Did any of these people who declare these statements with such self confidence even check into the facts, or are they just quoting the media? Did any of those who jump to condemn the rabbis who support the demonstration and condemn the arrest of an innocent woman consider the fact that perhaps these rabbis know more, and have seen more evidence than they have gleaned from listening to the “Tishkoret”?
One of the basic requests of the rabbis was to transfer the child out of Hadassah to a hospital of their choice. Why is Hadassah adamantly refusing to release the child to the responsible custody of a world-renown rabbi who will determine his medical care? Is it out of a sense of responsibility to the child? Do they feel more responsibility and love than the elderly rabbi? Or is it perhaps out of fear, fear of what will come to light regarding what they’ve done to this child? Doesn’t anyone stop and consider the fact that the child did not arrive at the hospital weighing seven kilo, but reached that weight during the seven months that he was there? Why doesn’t anyone wonder in what condition he got to the hospital, and if there was evidence of abuse, why did it take seven months for the hospital to go to the authorities?
And now to address the anguish that some of us feel over the “violence”, “chilul Hashem”, that has taken hold of Yerushalayim. Having watched tens of hours of footage of peaceful demonstrations that were held by chareidim, I have learned the truth about the violence. In demonstrations in which the avreichim did nothing more than lay down in front of tractors to protect their holy ancestors’ resting places, they were mercilessly beaten and injured. One avreich was dragged across the terrain by his feet as his head banged along the ground and boulders. He was later brought to the hospital with hemorrhages in his head. Another avreich had his hand twisted around and then hit in two places with the cop’s truncheon. He needed six hour surgery to put sixteen screws into his arm. One fellow who was a retired senior police officer in the narcotics department couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He exclaimed that he and his fellow officers were terrified of inflicting any pain on their “clients” who were drug-traffickers, and yet here all was well since the victims were chareidi. The demonstrators were made out to be devils and demons in the media. Interestingly enough, at the same time, a group of students lay themselves in front of tractors to stop the uprooting of trees that were hundreds of years old. They were deemed “enlightened”, “courageous”, and “heros”.
While being Maavir Sedra in Parshas Pinchos, I was appalled to discover that not one rabbi felt the need to run to the media to condemn the “violence”, or call him a “fringe fanatic” who didn’t belong to the community. What happened to peaceful demonstrations, to explaining and soft words? Surprisingly Pinchas did not take heed to what the world would say, or the impression his action would create of the Jewish nation as a whole. Severe actions demand a severe reaction. And this was called a Kiddush Shem Shamayim!! The hordes of people demonstrating are of the old guard. They do not take into account what the world will say, they do not feel a need to pander to the media. They know that this is an attack on their community as a whole, not just on Mrs. Moskowitz, and therefore, severe actions demand severe reactions. They know where the truth lies and are willing to quite literally be Moser Nefesh for their cause, to be Mekadesh Shem Shamayim with their bodies. And for this they deserve full credit and our gratitude.
11 yrs ago when I was pregnant with my second child my husband and i made aliya(im english ,my husband american). Our baby boy was born in the Shaari Tzedek hospital w/ multiple heart defects(which was incredibly not picked up in the many sonograms. On advice from the hospital owing to the numerous complications we took him to London Gt Ormond Street Hospital for Children for open-heart surgery when he was 5 days old. BH it was sucessful but a a week after we returned with him back to Israel, he broke out with fever so we took him back to the Shaarei Tzedek and after an echo we were told he had endicardites (an infection of the heart rarely seen in an infant.) After weeks of intraveneous antibiotics; surgeries that failed and a son that was slipping away I was convinced that something was amiss. We sent scan results back to England and were informed to stop this medication(prescribed usually to old men) because he did not have an infection but what they saw was a residual of his surgery).
This was when all hell broke loose……
We were ‘imprisoned’ there for 3 months with them pumping drugs into my baby,15 injections a day looking for veins as they were so weak they kept popping….he had no veins left and was black and blue all over his body. When they could not get any more veins they started putting lines through his arms all the way into his heart(a few tries failed so they repeated this over).He was so weak he cried with no sound he looked at me with tortured eyes……
Through all this we begged and fought to be discharged and they refused.
The things that went on there ranging from critically short staffed resulting in inexcusable negligence; and lack of hygiene. A girl came in to the next room; all was quiet for a week I saw her playing with her father ….as the weeks went by they turned her into an animal where she screamed all night,her lips were swollen and bruised, they ended up having to tie her down……then was the black lady next door who poured her daughters urine(she had malaria) down the sink out side my room where the doctors were’meant to scrub’ I can write a book………..
The end came when my husband called me on a motzei shabbos and told me that after another procedure they messed up (our doctor in England all the while advising against all this) and when he requested to speak to the surgeon was told that he had gone for the weekend and no-one else is available.I immediately left for the hospital, kept a taxi running outside,sent my husband (when the coast was clear….never enough nurses there anyways)I proceeded to pull out all the wires from my baby, hid him under my coat and walked out. Basically I kidnapped my own child. Sunday morning we were on a plane to England and my son didnt need any futher care for 3 yrs (one of his condition came back which was BH corrected with another sucessful open heart surgery back in G.O.S.H)
BH he is now a strong healthy 11 yr old who loves sports,extremely artistic and the one of tallest boy in his grade.
One major point I want to stess is that anytime I was in hospital with my son in London I was always consulted. Once my husband jokingly questioned this and the surgeon looked at him seriously and answered simply “the mother knows best!!!”
I am aghast at this compilation of drivel. Eventually, heads will roll at this hospital, and anyone remaining silent on this will be implicated as well.
The ease with which bloggers who have no mental health credentials swallow this story is mind boggling.
May Hashem protect this mother from the machinations of a staff desperate to save their skins.
One of the basic requests of the rabbis was to transfer the child out of Hadassah to a hospital of their choice. Why is Hadassah adamantly refusing to release the child to the responsible custody of a world-renown rabbi who will determine his medical care?
_______________________________________________
For the very simple reason that the rabbi has NO legal standing in this case. He is not the child’s family, nor the government nor an agent of it. He has no rights vis-a-vis this child; rabbinic status notwithstanding. Indeed the silliness of this idea, calls the entirety of your post into serious question.
un, cantoresq?
The family DID request the transfer, and the Rabbi was assisting them after being turned down.
This story is messy, very messy. Glib assertions of trust in the hospital of legal system are not only wildly naive, they are aiding and abetting the tarring and feathering of a devoted mother, whose only crime was to catch on to medical errors and negligence and threaten to expose them.
Speaking of Israeli hospital incompetence. Our 8 month old son was diagnosed with FTT, failure to thrive. The doctor in Sharei Tzedek decided that his oversized adenoids were the cause of the problem, and instructed the surgeon to remove them. Upon the completion of the surgery, the surgeon claimed, he had successfully removed the adenoids, however not only were they not enlarged, they were actually from the smallest he has seen. “I still removed them upon the Doctor’s orders.” When the condition did not improve, we had flown with our son to a New York hospital. Amongst other treatments, he underwent a surgery to remove his adenoids. The Surgeon claimed he had noticed that the Israeli surgeon had merely chipped away at a slight piece, and had left the bulk of the adenoids inside. Fascinating for the 20th century of advanced Israeli medicine, no?
To My Similar Story:
Kudos to you! How sadly ironic that in the Jewish state of Israel you would have been arrested and severely punished for doing what you did; saving a Jewish boy’s life!
Maybe they’ve run out of trees in Yad VaShem..
This all need not be discussed on this forum! It will not help in any way! Why don’t we just look for ways to help! Daven to HaShem! Let those who can help to what they need to do and leave the rest to HaShem!
Am I going to be ridiculed now for my opinion?
#21, when did the family request the transfer; before or after the commencement of the investigation? Once an investigation has commenced, the government is well within its rights to keep the child in its jurisdiction. That is one application of the doctrine of parens patriae.
“I would be totally astonished.”
I guess it’s time to be totally astonished.
I will offer a comment on Munchhausen by proxy than relate my own tale of woe in an Israeli Hospital. From what I have read, Munchhausen is more criminal behavior than a mental disorder, but it stems from the need for attention that can be traced to back sometimes to childhood. With that in mind, the typical cases of Munchhausen by proxy involves a mother making a child sick so the child is in out off the hospital with negative episodes only occuring when the child is with the abusive parent or when the parent is visiting in the hospital. This pattern continues until the child is taken away from the mother (parent,) until the child dies from unclear circumstances, or until another child is born and the abuse of the first stops but the second child now goes in and out of hospitals with mysterious symptoms. I know od no cases where a mother had 5 healthy children and suddenly the 6th became a victim on munchhausen by proxy. If someone knows differently please post it. A good reference book on the subject is “Death of innocents” by Richard Firstman. Munchhausen by proxy is central to the theme of the book.
My personal tale of woe. While visiting Israel trying to catch a bus, I took a shortcut and hopped over a wall that was about six lower than I thought it was on the other side (It was late at night, I didn’t see it.) I broke both my feet and could barely hobble to the bus. The following morning I borrowed a crutch and took a cab to Haddassah (Ein Kerem I think, but I’m not sure, it was many years ago) They took my information, a doctor looked at me and wrote something on a piece of paper and sent me to the get xrays (On foot, not in a wheelchair like I should have been.) I could not stand because of the pain I was in but the only bench was done the hall from the Xray room. As a result several people that came after me stood next to the door and were admitted before I could hobble over. This went on for a little while so I eventually sat on the floor next to the door in order to be the next one admitted for xrays. Lying on the table, I watched the technician manuever the xray machine so it was over my ankle. I moved my foot so my foot would be xrayed and the technician repositioned my foot so the xray was once again over my ankle. I told the technician (While wiggling my foot) that there was nothing wrong with my ankle, I could move it, it didn’t hurt, the problem was my foot. The tech said the paper says he’s supposed to xray my ankle. If I want to change it I have to go back to the doctor get re-examined and get a new paper. (by wheelchair? wishful thinking. Hobbling back downstairs I asked to see the doctor and was told he would be around in about 1/2 an hour. I hobbled to the door and hailed a cab and went back to the states the following morning.
In other words, you decided you know better than the doctor.
Pashute Yid,THAT WAS OUR ARGUMENT ALL THE WAY THRU!!! They claimed ‘u handed him over to us for care he now belongs to us’!!!
#18 (my similar story)
Your story is one of medical incompetence. I hope your son continues to thrive. But medical incompetence is everywhere. My worst experience was at Royal Free Hospital (in London). There are plenty of arrogant and incompetent physicians all over.
However, these have nothing to do with the current case in Israel. In this case, the defenders of the woman are coming up with the most ludicrous conspiracy stories. (And in the case of our own akuperma, truly offensive analogies to 1930s Germany.)
Let me ask you: during your ordeal at Shaarei Tzedeck, did you ever once think that your son was being intentionally mistreated because you are chareidi?
The MOST ludicrous conspiracy story is that this poor woman has Munchausen by proxy. What a sick, uneducated theory. My guess is that the staff there hasn’t met someone suffering from the disorder in all of their career.
They did a good job googling…