Continue Reading At LinkEven before the birth of their son, Ryan Crawford suspected that something was wrong with the boy’s mother.
A pregnant Kaylene Bowen would call Crawford in the middle of the night from random hospitals, reporting that she had been admitted for various reasons. Once, she claimed she’d had a fever of 110 degrees for seven consecutive days, Crawford said.
Crawford began to wonder if this woman he’d dated briefly and unexpectedly impregnated, was just trying to gain attention.
But it was nothing compared to the tales that Crawford says Bowen would tell after the premature birth of their son, Christopher, who was born after 33 weeks in April 2009.
“She was always saying Christopher was sick. Every single week. Every single month,” Crawford said. “She would always say, ‘Something’s wrong. He has this. He has that.’ ”
Between 2009 and 2016, medical records show Christopher was seen 323 times at hospitals and pediatric centers in Dallas and Houston and underwent 13 major surgeries, according to a Child Protective Services petition.
Throughout his young life, Christopher has been placed full time on oxygen and, at times, used a wheelchair. He’s endured invasive procedures and surgeries, including being fitted with a feeding tube that fed directly into his small intestine and led to multiple life-threatening blood infections.
His mother had even tried to get him on the lung transplant list and had previously had him in hospice care, court documents state.
For years, Crawford said he tried to convince Dallas County family court judges that his son was not sick but they believed Bowen, who would eventually claim that their son was dying, initially from a rare genetic disorder and later from cancer.
Crawford said a Dallas County judge even blocked him in late 2012 from visiting his son, who was then 3.
In the end, it would take Dallas hospital staff sounding the alarm with CPS — the second such report made by medical providers since 2015 — that prompted the removal of Christopher, now 8, and two of his half-siblings from Bowen’s care late last month.
Medical staff determined that Christopher does not have cancer or many of the symptoms that Bowen had alleged, and that he has no need for a lung transplant or hospice care.
Wednesday, Bowen, who now goes by the name Kaylene Bowen-Wright, was arrested on a warrant accusing her of injury to a child with serious bodily injury.
The 34-year-old woman is in Dallas County Jail in lieu of $150,000 bond. Her court-appointed attorney did not return a message seeking comment Friday but Bowen denied the allegations last month to CPS investigators.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article189037514.html