The mother who created her son's phantom illness

[Tuffty]

In one disturbing story, a mother pretended her son had many illnesses, even going so far as saying she was the sickest child in Britain and subjected him to many years of unnecessary medical treatment. Why? For the attention and the cash. She even had a tube fitted to his stomach as she claimed he couldn't eat in order to keep up the charade and claim freebies from sympathetic well-wishers like a cruise and a free car.

Lisa Hayden-Johnson has been jailed for three years and three months after putting her son through years of unnecessary medical treatment.

But how did she use his fake illness to dupe doctors, meet the prime minister and rub shoulders with royalty?

Lisa Hayden-Johnson attracted sympathy and admiration in equal measure.

She seemed to be living every mother's nightmare. Her child, born prematurely, was battling a life-threatening allergy which left him unable to eat.

She was stoically coping with this cruel twist of fate, struggling to make her son as happy as possible.

But it was all a lie.

If her goal was to attract attention, she succeeded - appearing on GMTV and selling her story to magazines.

Hayden-Johnson even took her son to collect a Children of Courage award at Downing Street where they met the then prime minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie.....

Source

"The boy, who is now eight, lives in another part of the country where he is recovering from the wounds left from an illness he never had."

Now that's just horrible. In a perverse sort of way, she would have got even more fame and attention if her son had died as a result of a botched operation he didn't require. Three years sentence just doesn't seem enough IMO

[kuro808]

I feel exactly the same way, that is probably the worst thing you could ever have done to a kid, three years isn't enough, but I think there should have more like 5 years and go into a psychiatric ward

[shadowstar]

Some people don't deserve to have children... makes me sick.