A Winnipeg woman repeatedly poisoned her young son with salt water and other substances for years in a bid to keep her husband from leaving her, the woman’s estranged partner alleged Friday.
“He hasn’t been sick one day since he was taken away from her,” the man said of his son, now seven.
“He asked me why mommy would do this and I don’t really have answers for him,” he said. “He knows mommy wasn’t good for him, but I don’t know how much he understands.”
The 28-year-old woman pleaded guilty Thursday to a single count of aggravated assault.
The boy’s father said his relationship with the woman soured a couple of years after their marriage in 2014 and he started bringing up the subject of divorce.
“I realized she wasn’t who she said she was,” he said. “She was promising to be a partner, someone who would work 50-50 and all these things and she didn’t do anything. I paid all the bills, I did all the cleaning. She just wasn’t who she sold herself as.”
With the birth of their son in 2017, the man said he set aside talk of divorce.
“I thought, ‘OK, we’re having a kid, let’s make this work,’” he said.
The man said his relationship with the boy’s mother didn’t improve and about six months later he was again asking for a divorce.
“That’s when all the medical stuff started happening,” he said. “I wanted out, but as soon as I asked for a divorce, he started having his weird illnesses, which started with seizures.”
“I wanted out, but as soon as a I asked for a divorce, he started having his weird illnesses, which started with seizures.”–Victim’s father
Court heard by the time he was five, the boy had been hospitalized 21 times, had been to the emergency department 29 times, logged “numerous” visits to his family doctor and medical specialists and had been diagnosed with 10 different medical conditions.
The man said he saw the boy suffer what he believed to be a legitimate febrile seizure — convulsions from a high fever — and was very upset.
“I was a mess,” he said. “I think that’s what made her know that would be a way to control me… after that she claimed a whole bunch of seizures that I never saw.”
Court has heard Child and Family Services opened a file with the family in July 2017 and initiated a safety plan that required the child’s paternal grandmother to supervise him while his father was at work.
By 2019, health-care providers became concerned the boy’s repeated hospitalizations may have been due to fabricated or induced illness in a child, previously referred to as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
The man said he continued to support his wife, not believing she would intentionally harm their child. That changed around the time of the boy’s fifth birthday in May 2022.
“We had the biggest fight we ever had and immediately she was dead set we had to get him a COVID shot,” he said. “I agreed and he was the sickest I had ever seen him,” vomiting throughout the day and night.
“We had the biggest fight we ever had and immediately she was dead set we had to get him a COVID shot. I agreed and he was the sickest I had ever seen him, vomiting throughout the day and night.–Victim’s father
The boy was admitted to hospital, and over the course of nine days his sodium levels spiked eight times and he underwent multiple medical procedures.
A doctor, suspicious that the boy’s sodium levels increased around the same time his mother was at the hospital, asked the man if there were any “coincidences” related to the boy’s repeated visits to hospital.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I had asked for a divorce every time,’” the man said. “Something weird would happen a week or two later and we would put it aside. I’d say ‘Let’s get (our son) healthy and then we will figure out how to split afterwards.’”
As suspicions mounted against her, the woman admitted herself to hospital, and in September 2022 sent an email to the man admitting that for eight months she had been using a syringe to shoot a salt solution up their son’s nose at night.
The woman said during one hospital admission in February 2021, she would inject salt water into the boy’s nose when his grandmother was sleeping or in the bathroom and then hide the syringe in her bra. She also admitted feeding the boy raw beef and raw chicken juice and caused him to contract conjunctivitis after putting dishwater in his eye.
The woman is expected to be sentenced sometime next year following the completion of several reports examining her mental status and risk to the community.
“I just don’t want to have to ever think about her again,” the man said. “I want to move on, close these chapters in my life and make some good ones.”
dean.pritchard@freepress.com
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.
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