News footage of Katherine Jackson from a story about her chronically ill daughter (WANE).
An Indiana woman who garnered public sympathy for her ill daughter was allegedly caught lying about the true nature of the girl’s condition.
Katherine Jackson, 41, is facing serious charges according to court documents from a local CBS affiliate, WANE. The charges include felony neglect and fraud. Jackson had previously appeared on WANE to share her story and gather gifts for her daughter, who she claimed had a terminal genetic disorder.
However, prosecutors revealed that while Jackson’s daughter did have a genetic condition, it was not terminal but rather chronic in nature. Further investigations into the case also uncovered that Jackson had allegedly failed to keep up with refilling her daughter’s prescribed medications.
Over the years, Jackson had reportedly made multiple false statements about her daughter’s health, including claiming she suffered from a rare genetic disorder called Pilarowski-Bjornsson Syndrome (PBS) and another condition known as Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS). On a GoFundMe page in 2021, Jackson asserted that her daughter was contending with “80-90 seizures per day” due to LGS symptoms.
Seizures can be a symptom of PBS, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The GoFundMe page, which was first posted in July 2021, stated that the then-5-year-old only had six months to a year to live, and that it was her dream to go to Walt Disney World. Her story got the attention of the Make-A-Wish Foundation as well as WANE, which ran a story on the child’s illness in August 2022.
Jackson told WANE at the time, “Only 10 people in the whole world ever had it and she’s the only survivor. It’s called Pilarowski-Bjornsson Syndrome. She will never get better.”
Court documents stated that while the girl was confirmed to have PBS, Jackson misrepresented the nature of the disease, which is not terminal but chronic.
But the medications the girl needed were not being made available to her, prosecutors said.
Three weeks after the 2022 WANE story, Jackson took her daughter to the hospital, where doctors suspected that there was medical abuse going on. The girl had continued to have seizures and other symptoms despite being prescribed medications to treat them.
Doctors at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis reportedly discovered that Jackson was not refilling the medications that were being prescribed for her daughter. Following that hospital visit, Jackson’s other two children — who were ages 5 and 6 at the time — were put in foster care. The foster parents reportedly told authorities that neither child was potty trained or in school.
Jackson was charged with one count of fraud and two counts of neglect of a dependent. All the charges are felonies.
