The abuse was discovered in 2014 & the trial has just begun.
Earlier coverage
https://www.vice.com/sv/article/9bgz...ter-with-urine
An Australian ?Mummy Blogger? is Facing Court After Injecting Her Daughter With Urine
Medical staff noticed yeast growing in the girl's intravenous drip after the nine-year-old was admitted to hospital with renal failure.
Av Julian Morgans
Oct 16 2015, 6:30pm
On Wednesday a 42 year-old woman from Cessnock NSW appeared for a second court hearing, charged with repeatedly poisoning her nine-year-old daughter with injections of urine.
The case started in March when the girl, who suffers a rare genetic disorder, was admitted to hospital with life-endangering renal failure. Tended court papers also show she was suffering a severe rash.
Medical staff say it wasn't unusual to see the girl back in hospital. She'd been sick for years and had even become a representative for children's health charities. At one point she even danced at a Sydney Opera House fundraising event.
But on March 11 doctors noticed yeast growing in an intravenous line running to the girl's jugular. Medical staff agreed this was impossible without tampering and the Newcastle Child Abuse Squad were called. Syringes, laxatives, and urine samples were later found in the mother's handbag, leading police to a grim trail of evidence stretching back to 2008.
It's now alleged that the mother, who can't be named for legal reasons, injected her daughter with urine and regularly fed her laxatives?something which could have caused her rash. There was also evidence that she tampered with the girl's stool samples.
The case was adjourned Wednesday, until December 2, but last night 7:30 revealed how the girl's mother had been an avid blogger and regularly wrote about her daughter's health. "I wanted him [the doctor] to treat her," she wrote in a blog that's since been removed. "Do something. Anything. She was in pain and I could see she was becoming unwell."
The mother had also been an ambassador for several children's health charities.
At a glance, this case seems to be a textbook example of Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP), which describes people who deliberately hurt others for attention. The name came from an 18th century German officer, Baron von Munchausen, who was known for his thrilling yet unlikely stories.
One study in the US estimated 600 cases of MSBP occurred in 1996 alone. The numbers in Australia seem much lower, with another study estimating an annual rate of between 15.2 and 24.5 cases. Numerous allegations are proven false in both countries every year.
In a similar case last year, a 22 year-old Queensland woman received a two-year jail sentence after feeding her daughter chemo drugs that she'd bought online. The four-year-old experienced significant health effects, including bone marrow failure, while her mum gained 8000 followers on Facebook and received around $500 (?320) in donations.
Yet in both cases friends and family stood by the perpetrator. As a friend of the alleged mother in Cessnock told 7:30, "in a lot of cases of parents that are accused, there is another explanation and there are other sides to the story."
This is true and it's one of the reasons the medical community has recently turned away from the term MSBP. Since 2002, it's been officially referred to as Fabricated or Induced Illness by Carers. This term omits the word "syndrome" and therefore emphasises that it's characterised by behaviour and it's not a syndrome of its own.
In Cessnock, the accused mother has been released on bail, despite concerns she'd tamper with witnesses or try to contact her daughter. She was granted bail on the condition that she doesn't have any contact with the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle or Westmead hospital in Sydney. She faces a maximum jail sentence of 10 years.
Police say her daughter was removed from her care in March and has since recovered.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-...court/10585636
Mummy blogger accused of poisoning child sobs as court hears she injected daughter with urine
ABC Newcastle By Giselle Wakatama
Posted about an hour ago
PHOTO: The girl was allegedly injected with urine over a 16-month period. (Supplied: Facebook)
RELATED STORY: 'Mummy blogger' accused of injecting ill child with urine
A New South Wales woman who blogged about her sick child has sobbed while leaving a court hearing where it was alleged she used urine to poison her child.
Officers from the NSW Child Abuse Squad started investigating in 2014.
The woman, 48, has pleaded not guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and using poison to endanger life.
The woman was investigated after medical staff at Sydney's Westmead Children's Hospital and the John Hunter Children's Hospital raised concerns about fast-growing organisms in her then eight-year-old's urine and blood.
The girl has a genetic illness and was regularly in both hospitals.
Child abuse squad detectives allege on three separate occasions a mixture of yeast and fungus grew in one of the tubes that made up the daughter's venous line, in a way that indicated contamination by urine.
The police brief said medical staff had never witnessed such a scenario before.
PHOTO: The woman is comforted by her husband as she stands accused of poisoning her daughter with urine. (ABC: Anthony Scully)
Mother denies deliberately making child ill
The prosecution alleges this was a case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where a parent makes their child sick.
The mother strenuously rejects that.
Today Crown Prosecutor Lee Carr told a directions hearing in Newcastle District Court that the medical evidence was complex.
The claim was echoed by the woman's solicitor Mark Ramsland as he left the court.
The brief of evidence for the case is nearly 15,000 pages long and there are more than 10,000 medical documents.
Mr Carr told the court the material was hard to read.
"I certainly concede the medical records are not easy to digest," he said.
At that point, District Court Judge Roy Ellis said a jury panel may need to be larger than normal, given the confronting nature of the case.
"In terms of the number of jurors, that might be a factor in terms of people who would not want to sit on such a thing," Judge Ellis said.
Mr Carr said that it might be a suitable matter for a judge sitting alone.
Girl cannot remember
Judge Ellis asked the defence legal team if the girl would be giving evidence.
The court heard the girl had been interviewed by police from the child abuse squad and a recording of that had been reviewed by the Crown and defence.
The defence stressed that the girl could not remember much, if anything, that may be able to assist with the proceedings.
Judge Ellis today confirmed that the woman's District Court trial would last up to a month.
While leaving court the woman nodded when asked if she loved her daughter.
Both she and her husband comforted each other and wept as they left the court precinct.
Her trial is due to start on February 6, 2019.