Haltom City mom accused of medically abusing 3 children was investigated twice before
A Haltom City mother of three accused of faking her children’s illnesses for years was arrested this week.
An arrest warrant affidavit filed by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office details allegations of medical child abuse dating back to 2013 against Susan Reynolds. According to the affidavit, Reynolds falsified her 5-year-old son’s medical history, had him on 23 medicines and forced him to use a wheelchair. According to the affidavit, the boy did not need those medical treatments.
Teachers, relatives and doctors told a Tarrant County detective that Reynolds’ children appeared healthy and had no medical problems when they were not around their mother.
On Oct, 14, Reynolds’ three children — a 5-year-old son, an 8-year-old daughter and a third child whose age was not given — were removed from her care by CPS, the affidavit said. On Tuesday, she was booked into jail and faces charges of endangering a child and bodily injury to a child.
Reynolds, 29, remained in jail Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.
Reynolds was investigated by Child Protective Services in 2013 and suspected of medical child abuse against her now-8-year-old daughter, according to the arrest warrant. She was not criminally charged and her daughter was returned to Reynolds’ care within a year. In 2019, a staff member at Cook Children’s Medical Center reported Reynolds again to CPS, but there was not enough medical evidence to confirm the abuse.
However, a school nurse made another CPS report against Reynolds in October, according to the affidavit. Tarrant County Detective Michael Weber began investigating on Oct. 4.
The school nurse told Weber, according to the affidavit, that the medical problems Reynolds insisted her 8-year-old daughter and her 5-year-old son had did not match the children’s behavior.
The school nurses told Weber she had recently talked to Reynolds about her 5-year-old son’s health problems. As the two stood in the school hallway, Reynolds told the nurse she was going to get him an electric wheelchair and “someday (his) heart will just burst and (he) will die.” As the two talked, the 5-year-old was running around the hallway, playing with other children without any problems, the affidavit says.
The nurse said she was worried about the kids, especially since Reynolds “seemed to relish the attention (she) gets from the children’s medical issues.” The affidavit notes Reynolds posted on Facebook often about her children’s medical conditions. As of Wednesday, multiple posts from 2020 and 2021 were deleted from Reynolds’ Facebook page. In remaining Facebook statuses in 2020, Reynolds posted about her youngest son possibly having a genetic disorder, respiratory distress, high blood sugar, seizures and other health issues.
Medical inconsistencies
The children’s teachers told Weber they also noticed inconsistencies between Reynolds’ descriptions of the children’s health problems and the way the children acted at school, the affidavit says. The 5-year-old’s teacher said he was sent to school in a wheelchair sometimes, but he could walk and run around without problems. In the previous school year, Reynolds had pulled her third child out of school and admitted the child to Cook Children’s hospital psychiatric unit for behavioral problems, despite the child’s teachers saying they never noticed any behavioral issues with the child.
At least five relatives, including the children’s fathers and multiple grandparents, told Weber they noticed inconsistencies in the children’s medical treatments and symptoms, the affidavit says.
The third child’s grandparents have suspected the children were being medically abused for several years, the affidavit says. The grandmother recalled one phone conversation in which Reynolds said her 5-year-old son needed a wheelchair. As Reynolds told the grandmother this, the grandmother was watching her grandson run around the house yelling, “Hey granny, watch, I’m a tornado.”
The grandparents also told Weber that Reynolds would take her son to Six Flags in a wheelchair “to get front of line passes.” The 8-year-old daughter’s father also described a trip to Six Flags where Reynolds had her son sit in a stroller with oxygen tanks, seemingly in order to go to the front of the line for rides.
Reynolds’ daughter was subjected to medical treatments that, according to the affidavit, were painful and unnecessary. In a nine-month-period in 2013, Reynolds took the girl to urgent care 28 times.
In September, Reynolds told doctors and nurses the girl was constipated and would not take her medicine. As a result, the girl was given a nasal gastric tube — a tube inserted through the nose and into the stomach to carry food and medicine into a person’s stomach. According to the affidavit, the girl told Detective Weber the feeding tube insertion, “felt like I was being eaten by a rattlesnake.”
While the girl was staying with her paternal grandparents, she had no health problems and was able to eat normally without a feeding tube, the affidavit says.
The three children also described being abused by Reynolds’ boyfriend while Reynolds watched. The children said he would force the children to drink hot sauce when they misbehaved. Each time they got into trouble, the spiciness level of the hot sauce increased. The children said they all had to face this discipline, even the 5-year-old — who Reynolds claimed had severe gastrointestinal issues. At times, the children would throw up from this punishment, according to the affidavit.
Reynolds’ arrest is the fourth suspected case documented this year in Tarrant County of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. In this syndrome, also called factitious disorder imposed upon another, a caregiver fakes or exaggerates a child’s illness for attention. The parent — usually a mother — might lie about a child’s medical history or symptoms to convince doctors to give their children medical treatments.
This story was originally published November 3, 2021 at 4:37 PM.
