WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Experts say the case of a mother accused of poisoning her 5-year-old son to death with salt appears be an example of how social media feeds into Munchausen by proxy, a disorder in which caretakers purposely harm children and then bask in the attention and sympathy.
Lacey Spears of Scottsville, Ky., has pleaded not guilty to charges of depraved murder and manslaughter in the Jan. 23 death of her son, Garnett-Paul Spears, whose sodium levels rose to an extremely dangerous level with no medical explanation.
As Spears moved around the country — Alabama, Florida and eventually New York — she updated friends on her son’s frequent hospitalizations with photos and musings on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and a blog.
“My sweet angel is in the hospital for the 23rd time,” she tweeted in 2009. Reports on the case by The Journal News, which covers the New York City suburbs, found she kept it up right through her son’s death, with 28 posts in the last 11 days of Garnett’s life, including, “Garnett the great journeyed onward today at 10:20 a.m.”
Dr. Marc Feldman, a psychiatrist and forensic consultant in Birmingham, Alabama, who wrote the book “Playing Sick,” said he believes the Internet has contributed to the number of Munchausen by proxy cases, estimated from one study to be more than 600 a year in the U.S.
In a case exposed in 2011 in Great Britain, a childless 21-year-old woman joined an Internet forum for parents, claiming to have five children and chronicling her nonexistent baby’s battle with celiac disease and bacterial meningitis. Doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital found three cases of mothers who falsely blogged that their children were near death and were rewarded with support.
“There are instantly accessible and endlessly supportive groups out there that will pray with you and cry with you if you purport your child to be ill,” Feldman said.
Spears, who was living in suburban New York when her son died, is accused of administering sodium through a feeding tube he had in his stomach while he was hospitalized. Prosecutors say she did it in the bathroom, where there were no surveillance cameras.
