Unusual Ohio Custody Case: Did Mom Fake Teen's Illness?
Is Angie Cox a caring parent with an unhealthy teenager? Or is she an unusual mom who encourages doctors to diagnose nonexistent symptoms and illnesses in order to put herself in the spotlight as the parent of a seemingly ailing child?
Those questions are front and center in an unusual Ohio child custody case that is being reported in detail by a local newspaper, the Courier. In an editorial earlier this month, the paper champions the cause of Cox and her husband. The parents, it contends, have been too-aggressively pursued by child protective authorities in Findlay, based on an apparently inaccurate long-distance diagnosis that Cox has Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.
However, a prosecutor who has been accused of getting too emotionally involved in the case says it is not she but the Cox parents who need to get perspective on the situation.
Meanwhile, hanging in the balance in the dispute is whether Angie and Chris Cox will regain custody of their four youngest children, ages 2, 8, 11 and 13. The four were taken from them in October and put in foster care, after Angie Cox was accused of subjecting the 13-year-old to unnecessary medical treatment.
A hearing is scheduled Friday before Hancock County Juvenile Court Judge Allan Davis, to determine whether the parents—who pleaded no contest in January to lesser charges of neglect and dependence as part of a settlement agreement—should get their children back. Ordinarily, such child custody hearings are closed to the public. But in this case, with the agreement of both sides, the newspaper plans to report on it.
For more details, read the full story in the Courier about the current status of the case.
