Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

One variety of child abuse name-checked in the British media right now is Munchausen's syndrome by proxy (MBP): the infliction of suffering, symptoms, and signs upon a child by its “carer,” facilitating some need that the latter may have to interact with doctors. Children may be maimed and murdered by their kith and kin, and all in the pursuit of medical interventions. Raised in Ohio, in the American Midwest, Julie Gregory survived such an upbringing as the proxy for her mother, a truly damaged woman, who put her daughter through the mill. …