Posted on 11/11/2005 10:09:44 PM PST by Lorianne
No one thought too much of it when Debra Diaz brought the first boy in early October, a 4-year-old with a burning fever, swollen leg and a mysterious-looking mark that everyone guessed was an insect bite.
But in the following weeks, she took her other two sons to Palms West Hospital with the same symptoms and the same marks. She insisted that their marks also must have been caused by insects, until an interrogation Thursday night elicited her sinister confession.
Investigators say Diaz, 25, of suburban West Palm Beach, admitted her three sons' violent illnesses last month were her own doing — caused when she injected each one with her own infected blood.
Authorities said the injections Diaz gave her sons — ages 1, 2 and 4 — were a desperate ploy for attention. They called her case an example of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare psychological condition in which parents make their children sick to get attention.
Diaz was arrested Thursday and booked into the Palm Beach County Jail, where she was being held without bail on three counts of aggravated child abuse and three counts of child neglect.
A judge has ordered her to undergo a psychological evaluation. Meanwhile, one son has been placed with a grandmother, the other two are recovering in the hospital and those who knew Diaz as an attentive mother are grappling with the new allegations.
"None of us realized it," said Leigh Puckett, who lived next door to Diaz and sometimes baby-sat her children. "We all thought she was a loving, devoted mother."
Diaz's husband, Tonny, 27, said his wife gave no signs that she was troubled or lacking for attention. Like everyone else, he said, he thought his sons were suffering from insect bites.
"I couldn't even believe it," he said. "If we knew about that, we would have done something."
Debra Diaz, though, told detectives she injected her sons because she was angry at her husband for drinking too much, and because she liked the attention she was receiving from hospital personnel.
Experts say those who suffer from Munchausen syndrome by proxy don't wish to harm their children but feel driven to do so to attract sympathy and attention to themselves.
"We think the folks who create false illnesses do it as a way of strengthening the appearance of attachment to other people," said James Hamilton, a professor who studies fictitious illnesses at the University of Alabama. "You can't get kicked off the island if you're sick or if your kid is sick."
Diaz contracted a blood infection earlier this year and was injecting antibiotics into her arm every day to treat it. Officials said they did not know the type of infection.
Investigators said the first child to receive her infected blood was the 4-year-old, who was injected in the left leg. Not long afterward, his leg began to swell and his fever rose to 106 degrees.
On Oct. 1, Diaz showed up at the Palms West Hospital emergency room with her ailing son.
The boy underwent surgery and was eventually released, but by the time he was let go Diaz already had brought her 1-year-old with similar symptoms.
A few days later, she brought in her 2-year-old.
By then, doctors were suspicious. They said it was extremely unusual for three brothers to be experiencing such unusual symptoms.
The state Department of Children and Families was alerted Oct. 22. Sheriff's deputies went to Diaz's house, on Neil Drive near Military Trail and Summit Boulevard, but found nothing amiss.
The case was reviewed again this week by the county's child protection team and sheriff's detectives, who brought in Diaz for an interrogation Thursday and persuaded her to confess.
Diaz was upset and apologetic, sheriff's Detective Debi Phillips said. She claimed she didn't realize the injections would make her children so sick.
"She said she loves her children," Phillips said. "It wasn't to harm the children. It was to gain the attention."
Doesn't a 106 temperature cause brain/organ damage?
Good Lord, that poor baby was almost dead. I hope they throw her so deep into prison that she never gets out.
"Munchausen syndrome by proxy"
I have a cure. Don't pay attention to chronic victims.
What a monster.
The good news, if any, in this story is that her blood infection likely is not AIDS which wouldn't be treated with antibiotics.
Yes!! My next screen name, the next time I get banned from FR! <evil laugh>
-a rare psychological condition-
Oh puh-leez. You can find two people in the world who like to catch and torture a specific kind of beetle, but it's not a CONDITION; it's coincidence and simply twisted.
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