WHEN MAYA KOWALSKI WAS TAKEN INTO CARE AMID ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE, IT WOULD LEAD TO A DEVASTATING CONCLUSION
Last month, 17-year-old Maya Kowalski took the stand at the South County Courthouse in Venice, Florida, to testify in a case that has gripped America.
The teenager broke down in tears as she recalled how –as a ten year old alone in hospital, in pain and in need of comfort –she was not allowed to speak to her own mother.
Maya was visibly distressed as she claimed she’d heard a member of staff lying about her.
“My mom was on the phone and the person she was speaking to claimed I never asked to speak to her. That I was doing fine. I was OK,” she said. “That infuriated me so much because all I did for days was demand to speak to my parents. That’s all I wanted to do, and I wasn’t just sitting in my room. I was crying.”
Maya wasn’t allowed to contact her mother as she had been taken into state custody at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St Petersburg, Florida, after doctors there deemed she was unsafe at home. It was an assumption that would prove devastating for Maya’s family, and end in a $220million lawsuit for medical malpractice and kidnap.
MYSTERY AILMENTS
For firefighter Jack Kowalski, it was love at first sight when he met Beata Zurawska. Beata had come to America from Poland as a teenager, and worked hard to qualify as a registered nurse. Her greatest wish, though, was to be a mother and after difficulties conceiving, she gave birth to daughter Maya in 2006, followed by son Kyle two years later. The family lived in Venice, Florida, and as Jack says in Netflix documentary Take Care Of Maya, “Life was good. It was a dream come true, paradise… then Maya started to get sick.” Maya’s sudden, dreadful illness was to be the start of a nightmare that has still not ended.
Up until the age of ten, Maya was happy and healthy. A talented child who enjoyed ballet, piano, swimming and riding her bike, she dreamed of being a gymnast. But in early 2015, she had a severe asthma attack. After that, she began to get ill with chest infections and headaches. Things kept spiralling and soon, Maya was wracked with pain, had mysterious lesions on her skin, and was experiencing dystonia –muscle contractions that caused her feet to turn inwards and made walking impossible. With their bright, active child confined to a wheelchair and in agony at the lightest touch, her parents were desperate to find out what was wrong. They began visiting doctor after doctor, but no one could offer any concrete diagnosis on what might be causing the distressing –and worsening –symptoms. Determined to get answers, Beata put her medical training to use and spent countless hours conducting her own research. When one of her patients mentioned it could be complex regional pain syndrome (C
