Family in Take Care Of Maya Netflix documentary is awarded $355m

SARASOTA COUNTRY, Florida – A jury in Florida ordered a hospital to pay US$261 million (S$355 million) in damages to a family after the parents were accused of abusing their daughter and barred from seeing her during months of treatment.

Their story was chronicled in the Netflix documentary Take Care Of Maya.

Jurors in Florida’s 12th Judicial Circuit in Sarasota County found against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in the Florida city of St Petersburg, court documents issued on Thursday show, ordering US$211 million in compensatory damages and US$50 million in punitive damages for false imprisonment, battery, medical negligence and other charges.

Damages were awarded for infliction of emotional distress on the daughter in question, Maya Kowalski, and her mother Beata, who died by suicide in 2017.

Maya’s father Jack was named as a plaintiff in the case representing Maya and his wife’s estate, court documents showed.

“For the first time, I feel like I got justice,” Maya, now 17, said in a statement to reporters outside the courtroom after the decision.

Her father said the case was about parental decision-making in the care of their children. “Parents have rights and they make the decision,” he said.

Mr Howard Hunter, a lawyer for All Children’s, said the hospital would appeal against the decision. In a statement after the verdict, he said the hospital had followed its protocol for when it suspects child abuse.

“We are determined to defend the vitally important obligation of mandatory reporters to report suspected child abuse and protect the smallest and most vulnerable among us,” he said.

The story of the Kowalskis was reported in The Cut magazine in 2022 and was the subject of Take Care Of Maya.

The film examined Maya’s stay in the hospital from Oct 7, 2016, until Jan 13, 2017, touching on her rare pain syndrome and a system that mandates hospitals to report suspected abuse.

According to the family’s complaint, Maya was 10 years old in 2016 when she was treated at All Children’s Hospital for complex regional pain syndrome.

On Oct 7, 2016, she was rushed to the emergency room because of her extreme pain, it said. Maya was then evaluated by a child-welfare agency doctor who specialised in detecting child abuse.

Subsequently, under an order issued by the state, Maya remained in the hospital for about three months despite the family’s attempts to get her out, the complaint said.

While she was there, medical orders included “isolating” her and restricting family visits, the complaint said.

It said she was touched against her will or without parental consent and put under video surveillance; her “symptoms worsened: Her lesions reappeared, her legs atrophied, she regressed and became wheelchair-bound”.

In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr Ethen Shapiro, another lawyer representing the hospital, said All Children’s had been carrying out the state’s orders in restricting visits.

The Florida Dependency Court, which handles matters of child abuse and neglect, restricted visits after deciding on Oct 14, 2016, that Maya should be sheltered.

“They made a determination that there was a reasonable suspicion of medical child abuse,” Mr Shapiro said, adding that the hospital had no discretion about where it could send her after that. “It is not All Children’s Hospital that is obstructing visitation.”

An attorney for the Kowalskis, Ms Jennifer Anderson, said Maya’s parents had been following orders from a doctor who had previously treated her pain syndrome, and the complaint said Ms Beata Kowalski had experienced “acute stress reaction and grief reaction” after being accused of child abuse and having her daughter taken away.

“In short, the actions of the defendants and their agents drove both parents, but especially Beata as she was also accused of abusing her beloved daughter, inexorably towards the most extreme of human behaviour,” the complaint read.

Mr Jack Kowalski was eventually allowed to visit Maya.

In a Dependency Court hearing on Jan 6, 2017, Ms Beata Kowalski saw her daughter in person for the first time since Maya was admitted to All Children’s Hospital, an attorney for the Kowalskis said.

Maya was using a wheelchair “and in worse shape” than when she entered the hospital three months before.

Less than 48 hours later, Ms Beata Kowalski took her own life, the complaint said.

The court entered an order on Jan 13, 2017, discharging Maya from the hospital into her father’s custody.

Ms Anderson said on Friday that the jury’s decision was “vindication for the family and what they went through”.

Mr Shapiro said he expected the appeal process to start around the end of the year or early in 2024. He said the jury award would not be paid until the appeal process is over. NYTIMES