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(Updates with statement from the law firm that represents the hospital)
Miami, Nov 9 (EFE).- A hospital in Florida (USA) must pay 211 million dollars to the family of a woman who committed suicide in 2016 after being falsely accused of abusing her sick daughter, a case of inspired the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya.”
After an eight-week trial, the jury declared today that Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, in St. Petersburg, on the west coast of Florida, is responsible for the seven charges against it, including the kidnapping of the minor Maya Kowalski, which led to her mother’s suicide.
A jury determined that the hospital must compensate the family of Maya Kowalski, the protagonist of the documentary.
Other charges were false imprisonment, medical negligence, fraudulent billing and assault on the minor, who was detained in the aforementioned medical center in 2016 under the argument that the mother was irresponsibly medicating her.
The jury found that the hospital engaged in “extreme and outrageous” conduct in its treatment of Maya, who was 10 at the time.
The hospital has already announced that it will file an appeal against today’s decision, noting that there were “clear and prejudicial errors” throughout the trial, according to a statement from the law firm Hill Ward Henderson, which represents the institution.
“The evidence clearly showed that Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital followed the state of Florida’s mandatory reporting law in reporting suspected child abuse,” he stressed.
As a child, Maya was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a rare neurological condition that causes severe pain at the slightest touch, the documentary says.
In 2016, when Maya was admitted to the hospital for stomach pain, medical services reported her mother, Beata Kowalski, to the Department of Children and Families (DCF) arguing that she was treating the girl with Ketamine, a medication that the mother said had helped relieve her pain.
The mother was accused of child abuse and after more than two months away from her daughter, she committed suicide in January 2017, at the age of 43.
The documentary shows the family drama and also the long process that the family went through to get the Justice to admit the case.
According to the Tampa Bay Times today, the Kowalski family will receive more than $211 million in damages.
The compensation, he details, was granted for the hospital’s decision to place the girl in a room equipped with video surveillance for 48 hours, strip her down to her shorts and sports bra, and photograph her without permission from her parents or a court. EFE
jip-aaca/ims/rrt
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