Jessica Gasser (provided).
A Texas woman, previously accused of subjecting her 3-year-old daughter to unnecessary medical procedures and surgeries—a situation once termed Munchausen by proxy and now known as “factitious disorder imposed on another”—has been “fully exonerated.” The woman’s daughter has reunited with her parents, as confirmed by the family’s attorneys to Law&Crime.
Jessica Gasser’s charges of felony injury to a child and medical child abuse were dismissed after a grand jury chose not to indict her last month. Furthermore, a Child Protective Services case was also dropped. Doctors had “independently and repeatedly” diagnosed Gasser’s child with “gastroparesis and hypoglycemia,” conditions she was accused of fabricating, according to a press release from the Houston law firm Connolly Schneider Shireman LLP.
The release suggests that the charges against Gasser originated from what her attorneys describe as a “so-called epidemic of Munchausen child abuse” that has been steadily “cultivated in Tarrant County for years.”
The attorneys allege that the crisis was “enabled” by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, several physicians and high-level state child welfare bureaucrats, and the county’s purported expert in child abuse, all of whom “warned of hidden Munchausen cases everywhere.” The “so-called epidemic” allegedly generated consulting jobs, book deals, and podcast appearances for those involved —”essentially monetizing allegations like those made against Ms. Gasser.”
“As we discovered later, their candid emails and texts show that these individuals boasted that they could become famous on a news program like 60 Minutes for ‘saving’ Jessica’s child, then evolved months later into angry and frightened acknowledgments that their actions had been uncovered,” Gasser’s attorney Mike Schneider said in a statement.
The releases claims that Gasser’s attorneys uncovered texts and emails sent between CPS, Tarrant County’s purported Munchausen expert, and at least one doctor showing that the group “clearly thought they could cover up their behavior with gaslighting news releases.”
“CPS deliberately made false claims about the child’s health to the court, oversaw her severe psychological decline, then sought congratulatory publicity in what became a botched attempt to cover their tracks,” Schneider said.
Earlier this year, an attorney appointed to represent Gasser’s daughter — independent from the parents and CPS — provided a sworn affidavit to prosecutors stating that “all allegations of abuse or neglect against Jessica Gasser and her husband are wholly false and without merit” and that “there was no evidence whatsoever that Jessica or her husband Austin had ever harmed [their child].”
The affidavit continued, claiming that the daughter’s attorney found “ample evidence” that the child’s medical records from Cook Children’s Hospital had been “repeatedly altered by someone to make it appear that [she] did not have medical conditions Cook itself had diagnosed my client with on many occasions, including gastroparesis and ketotic hypoglycemia.”
Gasser’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a message from Law&Crime inquiring as to whether she is planning to take any additional legal action.
