Maya Kowalski, the subject of the Netflix documentary Take Care of Maya, has broken her silence after winning her $260 million lawsuit against Johns Hopkins Children’s Hospital. According to the 17-year-old, “no amount of money” would “replace” her mother, who died by suicide in 2017 after she was banned by the hospital from seeing her sick daughter.
In October 2016 — when Maya was only 10 years old — she was admitted to the hospital by her mother, Beata Kowalski, for Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. At the time, Beata asked that she receive an aggressive ketamine treatment as she said it had helped improve her symptoms in the past.
However, the doctors thought that Beata suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome — which is when a parent fakes their child’s symptoms to make it seem as though they are sick (as previously seen in Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s case). Because of this, Maya was made an involuntary ward of the state and banned from seeing her parents for three months; her mother then took her own life in 2017.
“No amount of money would ever replace my mom,” Maya told Chris Cuomo in a NewsNation interview after the jury found that she was wrongfully imprisoned by the hospital. “So honestly we were just happy to get a yes, we were happy to have our prayers answered.”
She added, “My mom was the type of person when she was right, she was going to prove it. Unfortunately, she’s not here to carry that out. But we are here and we carried it out. And we proved her right,” per The New York Post.
Days after winning the medical malpractice case, Maya filed a criminal complaint claiming she was sexually assaulted while she was being treated in the hospital.
“During that first period of time of her imprisonment there in October [2016], a man entered the room. [He] appeared to be a physician without a chaperone or any female or anyone else in the room. [He] knocked once, came through the door, and approached her and then pulled down her pajamas and underwear,” Maya’s attorney, Greg Anderson, told The Daily Mail. “[He] came in and pulled down her pajamas and underwear to stare at [and] touch her private parts.”
Anderson added, “Maya suppressed this until about four weeks ago, [but] she did put in some notes to both the psychiatrist there at the time Dr. Katzenstein and later to Dr. Henschke, the two female psychiatrists that she saw along the way.”
The hospital’s attorney Ethan Shapiro said the allegations, which were revealed during the trial, are currently under investigation.
“As soon as the hospital became aware of the allegations, and in accordance with their policies, they immediately initiated an internal investigation and contacted law enforcement last month,” he said, per The Daily Mail. “Federal privacy laws restrict Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital from sharing more, but the hospital takes allegations of this nature very seriously and always puts the safety of their patients above all else.”
If you or someone you know needs to reach out about sexual abuse or assault, RAINN is available 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE (4673), or online at RAINN.org.
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 988.