would you be able to forgive?

cameragirl21 wrote: Just curious about something...there was a case back in the 90s here in FL, not too far from where I live about a girl called Jennifer Bush and her mother, Kathy Bush who had Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, which for those not familiar with it, it means that a mother who is usually quite knowledeable about medicine and is often a nurse purposely keeps her child sick in order to get attention. The intention is not so much to harm the child but to keep her/him sick in order to be made to feel like a doting mom and really just to get attention.
In this case, Jennifer Bush's mom kept her digestive system sick through various methods which led to Jennifer getting 40 surgeries...40 surgeries she didn't need, including a feeding tube and having a part of her intestines removed that led to her having a colosotomy bag, which as I understand it, is a permanent condition, although I could be wrong about that. She was constantly hospitalized and everytime her mother spent time alone with her, Jennifer would take a turn for the worse.
Anyway, after a trial, the mother was found guilty and the girl was taken into foster care out of state and has since not gotten as much a sniffle, so it's fair to presume that the mother was in fact, guilty.
Just out of sheer, morbid curiosity, I looked her up the other day and it turns out that in 2005, Jennifer turned 18 and asked the court to allow her to see her mother, apparently she missed her mother. One of the stipulations of the trial verdict was that the mother was forbidden from seeing her again, ever. Her father and 2 older brothers did see her sporadically over the course of the time she was in foster care.
So Jennifer asked the court to allow her to see her mother, saying she was ready to forgive her. The court allowed it under the circumstances that Jennifer and her mother not live together and that her mother not make any healthcare decisions for Jennifer.
I was a bit surprised at Jennifer's willingness to forgive her mother for essentially making her spend her childhood in and out of hospitals in between various unneccesary surgeries.
And before you ask how doctors didn't realize the girl wasn't really sick, that is the whole idea of how the mothers are usually nurses and/or have enough medical knowledge to create the symptoms and make the whole thing look painfully real, also the kids are usually made so sick by whatever the moms are doing that there is little time to figure out if the sickness is entirely real or not.
Munchausen's by Proxy is considered a psychological disorder.
Just curious if any of you would be as eager to forgive something like that?

coasterqueen replied: Hmmm, I honestly don't know if I can answer that. My gut says no, but my heart says maybe....sure. It's a hard question. If this girl really sees how her mom's illness is psychological and understands how most times these illnesses are out of their control, I could see her forgiving her. I'd also say she is a very forgiving, loving, caring, intelligent girl, then.

I still have to wonder, though, even with your last paragraph on how she fooled the docs...I wonder way before 40 surgeries how they would not know something was not wrong. KWIM? I mean, even going in and seeing NOTHING is wrong physically with her body parts should have drawn them to conclude something was going on. Even if the mom tells the docs of all these symptoms characterizing particular diseases, if they go in there and don't see the physical evidence which is present a lot of times....I think there is some neglect on their part as well. - now that's being said by someone who is not a nurse nor a doctor or any medical professional of any kind but still.......

cameragirl21 replied: Karen, the actions of the mother DO make the child truly sick, so when they operate, they will see an inflamed intestine, etc, they just don't know how it got that way.

coasterqueen replied:
Ah, I see. Weird.

I wonder HOW they figured out she was doing this and got enough evidence to convict her?

Danalana replied: I have read a lot about this and have seen some documentaries and movies about it. It's just incredible to me how somebody could have it, but it's very real.
To answer the question, I don't know. I probably would. But, there are a few things I have learned about forgiveness through choosing to forgive some people who hurt me pretty bad. 1.) Forgiveness isn't about them or for them. It's about me and my ability to move on. Otherwise, I am bound to that person. 2.) True forgiveness isn't something that I can do based on feelings. It's a choice...sometimes a daily one. According to my faith, I have been forgiven much, so who am I to withhold forgiveness from someone else? Forgiveness doesn't say "What you did to me was right"...it says "I'm choosing to release you and let go of it". That's just my 2 cents.
But yeah, it would be tough. I think knowing it's a psychological problem would help too. I doubt I would want a close relationship with her ever again.

cameragirl21 replied:
Because it was getting ridiculous, it was one thing after another and they noticed that it always got worse when the mom came to visit and was alone with the girl.

Maddie&EthansMom replied: My SIL's mother had Munchhausen's and my SIL (ironically named Jennifer) has never forgiven her for what she put her through. It's abuse on so many levels. And Jennifer is one messed up girl--physically and mentally. It's very sad.

Personally, I don't know what I would do. My SIL has no contact with anyone in her family and hasn't for 6 or 7 years.

mom21kid2dogs replied: As a social worker with 22 years of experience in adoption work with children almost exclusively removed from families due to abuse or neglect, I can tell you that her need to reconnect (which is really not a form of forgiveness, per se) with her family of origin is not at all uncommon.

boyohboyohboy replied: as a nurse, I can tell you that most of the time, when the dr's come into a facility to do rounds, it is not uncommon for when the nurse describes to the dr what she has seen and what the symptoms are for the dr to say, "what do you think we shoudl do? or what do you want?" and orders are more often then not written on the advice of the nurse.
there are some good drs who dont do it, but my experience in many facilities has been that is how its done.

ZandersMama replied: yes, i would say i could forgive, because it is a mental illness. i have forgiven others in my family for things done out of mental illness. i dont foget, i wish i could. but i do forgive.

cameragirl21 replied: I see a lot of people find it forgivable because it's a mental illness, which is totally understandable but bear in mind that being a pedophile or a serial killer are also both mental illnesses...I mean, a true serial killer is a psychopath and that is a mental illness that is all but impossible to treat but imo that doesn't make the actions or the person forgivable.
Being a sadist is a mental illness as well.
I am not knocking anyone's opinions or trying to change minds, just adding some food for thought to the equation.

I personally don't think I could forgive something like this but Idk, it's hard to say when you're not in the situation.
Jennifer Bush's mom was always cuddling with her and comforting her when she was sick but it was her mom who made her sick.

I watched a show on MTV some years back called "Fat Camp" about a group of overweight kids who went to a weight loss camp and there was one girl, Dianne, who was homeschooled and essentially had no friends or company besides her mom, who was a nurse. The girl was sick with everything under the sun because she was super morbidly obese and no one really accepted her besides her mom and the girl openly said she only feels comfortable with her mom. Dianne was 14 at the time. Her mom was a nurse at this fat camp and constantly babied Dianne, who didn't think she had to participate in the other activities (all of which required some exertion as all they did was exercise all day at these fat camps) because her mom worked there. That said, Dianne made no friends at the fat camp and constantly came crying to her mom. She lost 20 pounds at fat camp and gained it all back within months of going home. I got the distinct impression that her mom had some form of Munchausen's by Proxy and was keeping her fat in order to keep Dianne from becoming a rebellious teenager...this way, she had no friends and no one besides her mom and her mom could keep her close. Certainly, I am in no position to diagnose her as I have never met her but this was jmo from watching the program...the mom was enabling her by feeding her whatever she wanted and then the mom would administer the various meds the girl needed to get her through the day carrying all that extra weight (she was about as wide as she was tall, this was a very overweight girl) and the girl would in turn say that her mom should be a candidate for sainthood, literally, those were her exact words.
The point is that the mom appeared to be so loving and doting and accepting of the child despite her problems when in turn it's quite likely that her mom was the culprit...even the dad alluded to the mom being an enabler...again, jmo but I suspect the mom was more than an enabler. And the girl loved her fiercely because the mom seems to be all she has in a world that scoffs at the obese.
And it was very similar with Jennifer Bush...she'd get so sick that instead of playing with friends, going to school, etc, she was constantly hospitalized or bedridden and had no one but Mom to comfort her and Mom adored her and doted on her...but it was all a farce of sorts, I mean the mom did love her but she was responsible for her sickness.
I can see why she wants to see her mom again, I'm sure she has many fond memories where she had no one for company other than her mom but when you and stop and think about what the mom had done to her...just one example--putting fecal matter in her feeding tube so she'd get a bacterial infection....

DVFlyer replied: Just skimmed through the OP.

Did you mean would we forgive if we were the child? Or would we forgive if we knew the mom.

If I was the child, I would probably forgive but not excuse the actions. My relationship with my mom would be rough, but I would feel sad that she was not strong enough- mentally- to fight the disorder (or was incapable etc).

We don't pick our parents so, in some aspect, I would accept that it "just was the way it was" and some people- even moms and dads- aren't good people and now that I was grown up, I could be sure to be different.

Then I would wonder if the genetics would cause me or my children issues in the future......

My2Beauties replied: Don't think I could do it.

CantWait replied: I really don't know if I could, I guess this is something I would really have to be in the shoes for to make that decision, but off hand I'd have to say no.

I think it takes a really big person to forgive something like that for, especially at such a young age. They must have had some really good times, or a really close bond that makes the DD want to go back and see her mom again.

Also who are the courts to NOW say that she can't live with her mom. She's 18, an adult, and make those decisions for herself. The court has no rule over her.

cameragirl21 replied:
The court has no rule over HER but it does have rule over her mom (with regard to this situation) and the verdict forbade her mom from seeing her...if the girl visited her mom in spite of that then her mom would be in contempt of court and would likely be sent back to prison for violating a judge's order.
The girl pleaded before the judge to show that she herself wants to see the mom, which had a better chance of being granted than if the mom had asked to be allowed to see her daughter.
As for being allowed or not to live with her mom, the judge says she can't, therefore she can't. It's not a matter of the judge being able to rule over her as an adult or not, it's much the same as if her mom had been a pedophile, for example, and the pedophile's adult child has a child of her own and chooses to live with her mom, along with the child. She may be an adult but the courts can still forbid her from living with her mom if they see a clear opportunity for endangerment.

msoulz replied: IDK the story but I wonder how old the girl was when she was taken away and how much she remembers, how much she has blocked out? That would make a huge difference in the ability/willingness to forgive I would think. As a 40 something I can't think like an 18 year old anymore...

Calimama replied: Yes I'm 100% sure I could forgive her.

cameragirl21 replied:
she was about 9 when she was taken away.
Here is a link to an article about her from back in the day if anyone is interested: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,984465,00.html

mckayleesmom replied:
I saw that fat camp and her mom was definantly an enabler, but I don't think she intentionally meant to harm her. I think she felt bad for her daughter and overcompensated her to make her feel better the only way she knew how.