The young woman at the center of a medical malpractice case that culminated in her mother’s suicide testified Friday how she blames herself for the shocking death.
“I feel like if I let her think that I was doing okay that maybe she wouldn’t have taken the step of ending her life to get me out of there,” Maya Kowalski, now 17, said of her forced hospital stay, adding: “I feel like it’s my fault.”
Kowalski and her family are suing Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg for $220 million, asserting that she was detained against her will and separated from her family for three months.
Just 10 years old at the time, Kowalski was admitted to the facility in 2016 for treatment of severe pain.
Her mother, Beata Kowalski, told doctors that she suffered from a rare neurological condition called complex regional pain syndrome.
Prior physicians, she said at the time, had administered ketamine to ease her symptoms.
3 Maya Kowalski took the stand in the $220 million case this week. THOMAS BENDER/HERALD-TRIBUNE Pool photo/Thomas Bender/Sarasota Herald-Tribune Pool Photo/Thomas Bender / USA TODAY NETWORK
3 Beata Kowalski killed herself after being separated from her daughter for three months. Courtesy of Netflix
But hospital staff grew skeptical of both Kowalski’s physical complaints and her mother’s unorthodox treatment demands.
Concluding that Beata was suffering from Munchausen by proxy syndrome — where caregivers fake a child’s condition for attention — they barred her from seeing Maya and alerted Florida child welfare authorities.
Maya was then involuntarily made a ward of the state — and didn’t see her mother for 87 days.
Facing child abuse charges and distraught over the separation, Beats hung herself in the garage of their family home in January 2017.
Unaware of the suicide, Maya testified this week that she woke up around 2 a.m. the next morning.
“I was crying ‘I miss my mom, I love my mom,’” she said. “I had the feeling. I felt it.”
The case eventually became the subject of the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” released earlier this year.
Maya, now a high school senior, tearfully recounted her experience on the stand Friday, telling jurors that she feels imperiled at all times — even in her own home.
“In a lot of ways I still feel trapped in my 10 and 11 year old body,” she said. “That’s where my head space has been living for the last six and half years.”
3 The Kowalskis accuse Johns Hopkins Hospital in St. Petersburg of wrongfully detaining Maya. Mike Lang / USA TODAY NETWORK
But hospital attorneys have countered that medical staffers had legitimate concerns.
They argued that ketamine treatments are fraught with risk, and that Beata was calling for unusually high dosages to treat her daughter’s symptoms.
They’ve highlighted that a prior court found that hospital personnel acted out of sincere worry.
“This Court has determined that Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital reported suspected child abuse of Maya Kowalski in good faith,” a Sept. 12 request for special jury instructions states, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
But Maya testified this week that she still suffers debilitating symptoms — and that hospital staff callously scoffed at her condition while she was separated from her mother.
Maya’s father, Jack Kowalski, filed the $220 million lawsuit in 2018, alleging false imprisonment, medical malpractice and infliction of emotional distress.
The case is ongoing.
Maya Kowalski blames herself for mom’s suicide in ‘Take Care of Maya’ testimony
