Within the pain and torture of a family destroyed by Munchausen by the representative’s disorder

In early 2009 it was a difficult time for Fort Worth, the Texas -based Ybarra family.

Hope Ybarra, a mother of three, had fought a rare form of good cancer for eight years.

Now, the cancer had reappeared after two revisions, and this time, she told her family, it would be fatal.

Worse was that her youngest, 5-year-old Sophia has almost been ill since the birth with cystic fibrosis, generating 15,000 pages in medical folders.

After hearing the news of Hope’s forgiveness, Sophia placed her wings around her. “I will miss me, Mom,” she said.

But according to the new book of Andrea Dunlop and Mike Weber, “Mother Next Door: Medicine, Fraud and Munchausen of Proxy” (St. Martin’s print outside February 4), none of these were true.

Ybarra was not dying.

She had never had cancer.

And Sophia, who had spent her life undergoing medical procedures, including a surgical implanted nutrient tube, had also never been ill.

The form of abuse that causes a parent to undergo her child in years of unnecessary medical interventions is known as the Munchusen syndrome by the representative.

Dunlop, who waits for a podcast about the condition called “No one should trust me,” points out that Munchausen syndrome with proxy is determined by Intentional Fraud and “are not cases of someone who is merely anxious or even there are fair frauds for illness.”

In 2001, Ybarra, then a mother of two, was six months pregnant with twins when she told her husband, Fabian, that she had cancer.

“Hope will face an agonizing decision,” Dunlop writes on the story that Ybarra shared.

“Her treatment could endanger the babies, but if she lifts it, they could all die. She went forward with radiation, and two weeks inside, she was hit by another stroke. She had lost pregnancy.”

Her family had been destroyed.

“[Her sister] Robin remembers to see photos of the twin girls ultrasound, which they had already named Alexandria and Alexia, ”Dunlop writes. “Robin would continue to nominate her son Alexander in memory of little lost girls.”

Sophia was born in March 2004 four months of premature, and was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis shortly thereafter. For five years, family life has been dominated by concerns about Sofia’s disease and the possibility that Hope’s cancer would return.

Eventually, Ybarra moved with Sophia to Birmingham, Ala., After the Sophia’s pulmonologist moved there, looking for regular 10-hour back discs and forth for treatment.

Ybarra’s parents, Susan and Paul, raised nearly $ 100,000 for the family, including donations from many of their friends and clients.

By April 2009, when Ybarra was allegedly dying, she was transferred to the hospital to take palliative care.

But when Sophia’s oncologist summoned Susan for information on Yberra’s care team, the sad mother could find nothing.

YBARRA’s lie was exposed. For her family, it was as if the reality fabric was separated.

“One minute your baby is dying,” Paul Dunlop told. “Now your kids are a really confused character.”

YBARRA was transferred to the hospital psyche and was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and Munchausen syndrome.

Susan and Paul had to return the money they had collected, and the sharing of the story destroyed their lives.

Paul was asked to leave his job for 25 years. The Coupleifi lost their home and their marriage split, though they eventually agreed. (Susan died in 2019.)

But also, the family was forced to ask what else the ybarra could have lied – as if the pregnancy she lost would have real.

Susan controlled the urn that allegedly contained the Gemini’s grace. It was empty. Alexandra and Alexia had never existed. Robin had named her son after a lie. Now double destroyed, the family knew they needed a more possible heart response.

Ybarras brought Sophina for the test that determines whether a child has cystic fibrosis. Turned negatively.

“For almost every parent in the world, the news that their child did not have a terminal illness would have brought tears of relief,” Dunlop writes. “But when she heard the test results, Hope broke up in tears for a very different reason. She would have been caught.”

During an interview for a long hour, Weber, which Dunlop describes as “the only detective in the United States that has made this focused area of ​​expertise,” took over, “took Ybarra to agree to come A pathogen in the cup this was used to prove Sofia’s saliva, among other actions.

Ybarra was arrested in October 2009. A $ 25,000 bond was set, but no one would pay it. A year later, she admitted a 10 -year prison admission bargain, and Dunlop writes that “she was suffering daily with her decade -old sentence.”

The three children, now adults, have had no contact with Ybarra since her arrest. Fabian visited him in prison only once, to ask what happened in their once considerable savings account. But Ybarra said he didn’t remember.

“To date, her favorite line is, I don’t remember,” Fabian Dunlop told.

“She’s still the victim,” Fabian said. “She will always be the victim.”