Mom lies about daughter’s terminal illness to get Make-A-Wish gift, Indiana cops say
A 6-year-old girl only had “months left with us,” a mother told an Indiana news outlet in 2022. “That’s what doctors say.”
Her daughter was diagnosed with Pilarowski-Bjornsson Syndrome at birth, the Decatur mother told WANE in 2022.
Make-A-Wish gifted the girl, her younger sister and mother a trip to Disney World in 2019, but the family then opted for a parade in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, WANE and police said.
But the girl’s wish to go to Disney eventually happened after money was raised through a GoFundMe, Fort Wayne police said.
Now, the mother is facing criminal charges and is accused of lying about the deadliness of her daughter’s illness to get a Make-A-Wish gift and raise cash for a Disney trip, according to an affidavit filed on Feb. 5.
Additionally, the 41-year-old woman is accused of not potty training her two daughters, who were 6 and 5 at the time, and not giving her older daughter the prescribed medication she needed, police said. She’s facing two counts of child neglect and one count of fraud.
The woman’s attorney information was not listed.
“We are deeply disturbed by the allegations in this case and intend to follow it closely in the hopes of learning exactly what happened. At all times, Make-A-Wish has tried to act in the best interest of (the child), and we hope that her wish has served as a source of joy and comfort,” a representative from Make-A-Wish told McClatchy News in an email.
The mother said her daughter was diagnosed with Pilarowski-Bjornsson Syndrome, which is an incurable genetic disorder, according to court documents. However, a genetics doctor told police that the disease is not terminal despite the mother’s claims.
Though the girl’s Disney trip was swapped for a parade in 2020 through a Make-A-Wish grant, a GoFundMe was started in 2021 to raise the money so the family could go to the theme park.
The GoFundMe page described the girl as a “five-year-old girl who has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS), having 80-90 seizures per day” and that “Doctors have given (the girl) 6 months to a year to live. (Her) wish is to go to Walt Disney World and meet Princess Elsa with her mother and her little sister, who is her best friend,” court documents said.
A withdrawal of $1,563.71 was made from the GoFundMe account in 2021, according to court documents.
Both daughters told police that they went to Disney World.
The mother also told a psychologist working with the two daughters in 2021 that the older daughter’s illness was terminal and that she didn’t think her daughter would not live another year.
In 2022, the mother took her sick daughter to the hospital because she had a high and irregular heartbeat, court documents said. At the time, hospital staff suspected medical child abuse because they could not find any medication in the girl’s system despite the mother reporting that she had seizures, police said.
A pediatrician reviewing the girl’s records noticed that she had been prescribed several medications for seizures and a lung disorder, but her mother would not pick them up or have them refilled, according to the affidavit.
Her two daughters were eventually removed from the mother’s custody and placed in a foster home, police said.
The girls’ foster parents said that when the kids were placed in their home, they were not potty trained nor were they in school, the affidavit said. The foster parents potty trained the girls and put the older daughter in school.
The mother is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 10.
Decatur is a 125-mile drive northeast from Indianapolis.
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 1:16 PM with the headline "Mom lies about daughter’s terminal illness to get Make-A-Wish gift, Indiana cops say."
