Immediately after moving with C and M from Zambia to Seattle, WA, Sophie starts bringing C to various doctors, reporting severe health issues. Just three days after C’s third birthday, she is diagnosed with Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood (AHC), a rare, one-in-a-million neurological disorder. Simultaneously, Sophie enrolls her older daughter, M, in an elite gymnastics program. We speak to some of the moms who knew Sophie from the gym to get a better picture of Sophie and the two girls. They reveal a picture of a woman who, despite seeming to move from one crisis to the next, is somehow caring for a medically fragile child, nurturing an aspiring Olympian and financing all of this without a job or a partner. *** Links and Resources: Chad Goller-Sojourner’s Sitting in Circles with Rich White Girls: Memoir of a Bulimic Black Boy will be adding show dates in spring 2025. Click HERE for more information. Preorder Andrea and Mike’s new book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy Catch Andrea and Mike at their Seattle Book Launch Event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/andrea-dunlop-and-mike-weber-the-mother-next-door-tickets-1097661478029 Learn more about our featured non-profit and mutual aid organizations: https://www.nobodyshouldbelieveme.com/nsbm-supports/ Check out You Probably Think This Story's About You: https://brittaniard.com/podcast Click here to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show! Subscribe on YouTube where we have full episodes and lots of bonus content. Follow Andrea on Instagram for behind-the-scenes photos: @andreadunlop Buy Andrea's books here. To support the show, go to Patreon.com/NobodyShouldBelieveMe or subscribe on Apple Podcasts where you can get all episodes early and ad-free and access exclusive ethical true crime bonus content. For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit MunchausenSupport.com The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines can be downloaded here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the warning for this episode?
True Story Media. Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show, we discuss child abuse, and this content may be difficult for some listeners. If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.
With the elements of evangelical missionary work and transracial adoption in this season's case, I've gone into some unfamiliar territory. But one thing about this story that feels very familiar is the way that Sophie Hartman appears to forever be in some kind of crisis. She seemed to move from one big drama to the next.
This was one of the primary things we heard from the numerous folks we spoke to on background for this story, whether it was people who knew Sophie in high school or over the last few years here in Seattle. They told us there always seemed to be something, whether it was Sophie's own health issues or dramas, this big adoption saga, or something having to do with one of her daughters.
Sophie was constantly mired in some kind of battle. And this is something I remember so vividly with my sister Megan, her constant dramas and our attempts to explain them away. So yes, okay, Megan shaved off her hair in high school and pretended to be losing it. But you know, teenage girls go through stuff.
Okay, so she cashed all those bad checks, but she was really embarrassed about it and she probably learned her lesson, right? Nobody's perfect. Okay, so she did fake a whole pregnancy, but you know, we didn't like that boyfriend she was with. Maybe this is his fault, somehow. And now she's got this new boyfriend, and he seems so nice. And maybe he'll help even her out.
Maybe this is all behind us now. But it was never behind us. And what was coming was always worse than the last thing. It wasn't until I started talking to experts that I understood how compulsive Megan's behavior had really become. She had this need to keep upping the ante, like she was an addict whose tolerance was increasing. And it seemed to destroy everything in her path.
So we kept waiting for the crisis to be over. But the truth was, we could patch the holes, my parents could bail her out one more time, we could make excuses for her once again, but it would never, ever be over.
We have plenty of evidence, both from Sophie's own journals and from the recollections of folks we spoke to on background, that Sophie's pattern of constant crisis began long before Zambia, but certainly it escalated once she went abroad. In her memoir, Sophie tells this heroic story of emerging victorious after an agonizing battle to adopt her daughters. So okay, the battle is won.
Smooth sailing now, right? But in a pattern that would ratchet up dramatically over the next several years, for Sophie and her girls, the minute one crisis faded, the next was just beginning. People believe their eyes. That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Sophie Hartman face after the move?
And it was nice in these photos, honestly, to just see the girls as little humans. You know, the more we dug into this case and talked to people who'd known them, the more CNM started to come into focus. People remembered M as being this very quiet, self-sufficient, talented, disciplined kid, while C was really more on the bubbly side and very outgoing and fun to be around.
As Sophie and her daughters settle into life in the Pacific Northwest after their move in 2015, their lives become dominated by two things. The first is C's medical appointments. Almost immediately upon arriving, C is going to the doctor constantly for myriad issues. C's health appears to dominate much of Sophie's time right from the jump.
From the records we have, we know that when Sophie originally brought C to the States, she was treated for Giardia. This is a very common parasitic infection that is fortunately easily treatable. In the first few years of her life, Sophie reported C having a variety of vomiting spells, constipation, and other gastrointestinal issues.
This ultimately resulted in the placement of a G-tube, this is a surgically placed feeding tube, in 2017, and a psychostomy tube, which is used to flush a child's bowels, in 2018. Sophie also reported frequent seizures and episodes of full-body paralysis. C used a number of different mobility aids during this time, including leg braces and a wheelchair.
And three days after her third birthday, C was given a devastating diagnosis of a rare neurological condition called AHC, alternating hemiplegia of childhood, that causes paralysis and weakness on one or both sides of the body. The instance of this disease? One in a million.
Over the next five years, C was seen at various hospitals as Sophie tried to get answers about her daughter's complex health issues. During her 2021 interview with Renton PD's Detective Adele O'Rourke and Detective Jason Wrengley, Sophie describes this medical odyssey.
We moved back to the States basically because I knew, because I was living overseas in Zambia. Oh, wow. And I knew that there was something medical going on and we just don't have access to care. We immediately were seen at Seattle Children's.
So basically we started at Seattle Children's and kind of the first diagnostic that they did was a brain MRI and that indicated some brain damage that they likened thinking it's like due to drug and alcohol exposures.
Okay.
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