She Went on a PR Tour for Her Sick, Adopted African Child. Was It All a Lie? [View all]

[Jilly_in_VA]

Last summer, Sophie Hartman was fixated on her 6-year-old adopted daughter Carmel possibly showing signs of early puberty.
The 31-year-old single mom from Renton, Washington, scheduled an appointment at Seattle Children’s Hospital with a pediatric endocrinologist, a doctor specializing in glands and the hormones they produce, according to a Renton Police probable-cause affidavit.

Hartman, a white, Jesus-loving former missionary, strapped Carmel—a little Black girl born in Zambia—into a wheelchair and rolled her into a medical room, where they met with the endocrinologist. Carmel was “a very handicapped child” who was showing “cyclical symptoms” such as a “discharge” in her underwear, Hartman told the doctor. The symptoms were occurring for four straight days around the same time every month, she added.

Carmel went through a battery of medical exams, including blood work and X-ray imaging. The doctor found “modest clinical findings of early puberty,” but not enough to confirm Carmel was indeed accelerating into womanhood. During a follow-up appointment at Seattle Children’s in October, another endocrinologist ran more tests on Carmel. The doctor found no signs of active puberty in the child, but informed Hartman about two treatments used to suppress pubescence. One involved giving Carmel injections; the other option was more drastic, requiring “surgically lacerating” Carmel’s skin with a scalpel to insert an implant used to suppress early puberty.



The same day, Washington’s Department of Child, Youth, and Families placed Carmel and her older sister, Miah, whom Hartman also adopted, into protective custody. Hartman’s quest to stifle Carmel’s alleged early puberty is just one of several bizarre episodes documented in a probable-cause affidavit that led King County prosecutors to charge Hartman last month with two second-degree felony counts: assault on a child and attempted assault on a child.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sophie-hartman-went-on-a-pr-tour-for-her-sick-adopted-african-child-but-was-it-all
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I put this here because I didn't know where else to put it. It's a sickening story but it highlights a couple of things---one, the abuse of adopted children, especially those from foreign countries, often by evangelicals who have twisted reasons for adopting them, and two, the prevalence of what used to be called Munchausen by Proxy but now has another name which I forget. I saw a couple of possible examples during the brief time I worked Peds, also one unforgettable case of full-blown "regular" Munchausen which was seriously awful.