A Texas mom accused of medical child abuse in an alleged Munchausen by proxy case will face no jail time after a grand jury determined she was not faking the conditions her child has.
Jessica Gasser had been facing charges of injury to a child and medical child abuse until her child was able to be “independently and repeatedly” diagnosed by doctors with gastroparesis and hypoglycemia, according to a press release obtained by Law&Crime.
In what officials had claimed was a case of Munchausen by proxy, investigators in Tarrant County, Texas, alleged that Gasser had medical professionals perform “unnecessary medical procedures,” Fox 4 reported at the time of her arrest in July 2023.
The allegations came after months of investigation following doctors’ concerns about Gasser taking her then-3-year-old child to multiple medical facilities in different states. According to court documents obtained by the outlet at the time, she allegedly told a doctor her daughter did not have gastroparesis despite listing it on a different form.
However, Gasser’s attorneys say that the allegations arose after officials and professionals allegedly bought into a “so-called epidemic of Munchausen child abuse” for their personal benefit. The attorneys allegedly uncovered texts and emails where various professionals “boasted that they could become famous on a news program like 60 Minutes for ‘saving’ Jessica’s child,” according to the press release.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, who was named by attorneys as one of the bodies allegedly “essentially monetizing” Gasser’s case, declined to comment about the decision to WFAA, saying, “We respect the grand jury’s decision.”
After the grand jury decision and a case by Child Protective Services was also dropped, Gasser and her husband were reunited with their daughter, who is now almost 4.
“Any normal parent would do exactly as I did,” Gasser told WFAA. “If no one was helping your child, what would you do? You would go to somebody else who would. That is all I did.”
Originally published on Latin Times
