Is Kaylene Bowen-Wright Really to Blame?

Kaylene Bowen-Wright has just been sentenced to six years in prison, but as I relate this medical scandal, I can’t help but wonder if she is the person who should be in jail. That she eventually had an awakening and pled guilty, is far more than anything the healthcare system has admitted.

Ms. Bowen-Wright’s child is now 10 years old. When she leaves prison, he will be well into his teenaged years. He will be scarred for life, emotionally and physically.

Conjecture Away

We can offer all kinds of theories as to why Kaylene Bowen-Wright took her child into Texas pediatric hospitals in Dallas and Houston, an incredible 320 times. As the result of these visits, between 2009 and 2016, he had a total of 13 major surgeries. Somehow, most improbably, Ms. Bowen-Wright was able to report symptoms consistent with cancer. 

Was the mother emotionally ill during this period? We do not know. What we do know is that Child Protective Services eventually took the little boy away from her in 2017.

A Dallas hospital finally determined (apparently after more than 300 visits) that the child didn’t have cancer.

In a separate statement after the mother confessed to apparently using her child as a pawn of her own fantasies that she had made it all up. The father stated (presumably they were separated): “I am happy that she decided to do the right thing. Eventually, the lies had to stop.”

The father has been made the sole legal guardian of the child. He made one additional comment worthy of note:

 “Medical abuse is underreported every day. Now it’s time to move forward, and make sure no child has to suffer the abuse my son endured.”

What Time is It?

From an ethical point of view, this scandal (and scandal is exactly what it is), is so outrageous, it should rationally make anyone angry. Assuming Kaylene Bowen-Wright had some type of emotional issue and was not responsible for her poor judgment and lack of empathy for what she was doing to her child, the spotlight must turn first, to the father and then to the medical community.

I must assume the father was in another state, or had been legally forced to lose contact with the child. No loving parent could have subjected a healthy child to 13 unnecessary surgeries and 320 hospital visits. Yes, the father was correct when he said: “…no child has to suffer the abuse my son endured,” but where was he when the abuse was occurring?

Let me further given him the benefit of the doubt and empathize that perhaps he really was led into believing that there was some type of obscure medical mystery; that the major pediatric centers, physicians and nurses knew something no one else knew.

Perhaps what they knew, was that the child was a Medicaid gold mine.

I have not approached the question of “Who paid for all of this?” It is a logical and necessary question. I am going to go out on a limb and assume the single mother was not a Powerball winner or the daughter of a billionaire. Considering 13 major surgeries, countless lab tests, professional support, and 320 hospital visits we are indeed talking in the millions of dollars in billings. Who billed and who paid? Who diagnosed, who treated, who performed surgeries, who anesthetized and nursed, who coded the billing and who asked for reimbursement?

It is not hard to imagine that in this case, the system was so clueless, so irresponsible and so greedy in an atmosphere lacking meaningful oversight, that a little boy became nothing but a Golden Goose. From an ethical point of view, I contend the real abuser was the system itself.

They, not the mother, needed to be on trial.

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