Shine OnUtah mom fakes daughter’s cancer to get charity money
A Utah mother is spending 30 days in jail after she admitted to faking her 4-year-old daughter's leukemia and collecting more than $3,000 in donations from her community.
Abreail Winkler has lied about having cancer in the past, says her ex-husband, Derik Winkler. She previously told people she was fighting stage IV ovarian cancer, and convinced their oldest daughter that she had leukemia and underwent a bone marrow transplant as a toddler, reports Desert News.
"I know what I did was terribly wrong and inexcusable," the mother of three told a court room on Wednesday. "Nobody deserved for me to do this to them, and I'm sorry for what I've done, and the damage I've caused to my ex-husband and all of the children involved, including my own."
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Abreail has since lost custody of her three children and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, along with two years probation, mandatory therapy, a $1,000 fine and to pay restitution to her victims.
The children's father grew suspicious of their mother's behaviour this summer, when she wouldn't let him to see their four-year-old daughter for two months, claiming the girl had cancer. He opened a custodial interference case, and when the judge started requiring him to attend the child's doctor appointments, they discovered that the appointments failed to exist. This prompted the authorities to look into the case.
So far, authorities have not indicated that the woman has Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder in which a caregiver pretends a child is sick and seeks unneeded medical help to gain attention.
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Cases involving the disorder are rare, but not unheard of. Last year, a British mother of four convinced her healthy nine-year-old son that he was gravely ill, taking him to 115 doctor's appointments in just three years for no medical reason.
And in 2010, a North Carolina mother pleaded guilty to suffocating her daughter to get attention from doctors and nurses.
Winkler's case, on the other hand, appears to be strictly financial -- the second of its kind this year. In April, a New Jersey mother was sentenced for faking her son's cancer in a scam that brought in $3,500 in donations.
