The 17-year-old girl who won a medical malpractice case against a Florida facility that kept her from her mother — who later took her own life — said the jury’s decision vindicated her late parent.
“No amount of money would ever replace my mom, so honestly, we were just happy to get a yes, we were happy to have our prayers answered,” Maya Kowalski told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo after a Florida jury awarded her family a staggering $261 million in their suit against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg.
Last week, the panel ruled the hospital wrongfully separated Kowalski from her mother and awarded the family a whopping $261 million for a slew of offenses, including wrongfully placing the young girl under video surveillance for 48 consecutive hours and making her strip down to shorts and a training bra for a photograph.
Kowalski, whose case was featured in the popular Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” told Cuomo the jury’s decision would have meant “everything” to her mother.
“My mom was the type of person when she was right, she was going to prove it,” she said. “Unfortunately, she’s not here to carry that out. But we are here and we carried it out. And we proved her right.”
Kowalski had been admitted to the hospital in October 2016 by her mother, for treatment of a painful neurological condition known as Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome.
Her mom, Beata Kowalski, demanded her daughter receive aggressive ketamine treatment, an approach she said had previously relieved her symptoms.
Doctors, however, believed the elder Kowalski was making up the symptoms and suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, in which a parent fabricates a child’s symptoms to get sympathy and attention.
Hospital staffers contacted Florida child welfare authorities, and soon the girl was removed from her parents’ care and made an involuntary ward of the state.
A distraught Beata Kowalski hung herself in her garage three months later.
Kowalski’s attorney, Nick Whitney, said when Maya was in the hospital’s custody, the facility didn’t protect her from “inside abusers” and social workers who took “advantage of her vulnerability.”
On Friday, Kowalski filed a criminal complaint with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department involving the hospital, claiming she was sexually abused there.
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On Friday, Kowalski filed a criminal complaint with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department involving the hospital, claiming she was sexually abused there.