Netflix Takes On the Wrenching Story of a Kid’s Strange Illness and a Mom’s Suicide
Even if they’re ultimately disproven, accusations of child abuse leave lasting marks and, as evidenced by Take Care of Maya, those scars can run terribly deep. Debuting on Netflix on June 19 (following its premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival), Henry Roosevelt’s documentary is an empathetic portrait of one family’s baffling ordeal and the ensuing nightmare that befell them courtesy of a medical establishment that purportedly prioritized the welfare of kids and yet at every turn put its own interests first—resulting, tragically, in death.
Take Care of Maya is, first and foremost, a tale about the horror and desperation felt by parents when their child falls ill with a difficult-to-diagnose condition. Born to firefighter Jack and nurse Beata Kowalski, Maya was a bundle of joy who, in 2015 at the age of 9, developed a series of puzzling symptoms: respiratory problems, headaches, blurred vision, lower-extremity lesions, turned-inward legs, and incessant, intense pain. Jack and Beata took her to numerous doctors to no avail, until Beata’s diligent research led them to Anthony Kirkpatrick, an anesthesiologist who had expertise in the puzzling malady from which Maya suffered: complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS).
In what seemed like a miracle to the Kowalskis, Kirkpatrick didn’t just know what was wrong with Maya—he had a course of action to remedy it. The solution, he claimed, was ketamine, which when administered under the care of a doctor could be a safe, effective treatment for CRPS, stimulating the brain and, in doing so, improving her blood pressure, circulation, and breathing. Maya began receiving low doses of the drug, to little effect. In response, Kirkpatrick decided they had to take an additional, more drastic step: inducing a five-day ketamine coma that would reset her internal system and produce longer-lasting benefits. This was an unconventional (if not radical) option, and that fact was hammered home by Kirkpatrick’s announcement that, because it was so experimental, it was only available in Mexico. Yet with few alternatives, the Kowalskis soldiered onward, traveling in November 2015 to Monterrey to put Maya into a temporary narcotized sleep.
Take Care of Maya presents footage of Maya at home before this procedure as well as Beata-shot cellphone clips of her during and emerging from the coma. If that material is harrowing on its own, the context in which it’s presented makes it all the more ominous. New interviews with Jack and Maya (but not Beata), as well as snippets of their Zoom depositions from 2021, suggest that something is—or subsequently went—amiss. At least for the first year following this treatment, Maya steadily recovered. But on Oct. 7, 2016, the hinted-at calamity occurred, when Maya relapsed and Jack, desperate for support, took her to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in Sarasota, Florida. There, Beata reportedly behaved in a belligerent and controlling manner, demanding that doctors give her daughter ketamine. Once admitted to the intensive care unit, Maya was visited by Dr. Sally Smith, and it’s at that point that the Kowalskis’ lives changed forever.
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As they eventually learned, Dr. Smith was a child abuse pediatrician who worked with the hospital to determine whether parental misconduct was occurring. When she examined distressed Maya and then heard about her considerable ketamine regimen, she promptly concluded that Maya was not really sick; rather, she was the victim of her mother Beata, who had Munchausen by proxy, a disorder in which a caregiver provides false, exaggerated, or misleading information and partakes in self-serving conduct in a way that harms a child. Maya was placed in state custody and treated in the way that the hospital’s doctors saw fit, and during her stay in the facility, Maya alleges that physicians repeatedly told her that she and her parents were liars. Jack and Beata, meanwhile, were legally denied any contact with their daughter.
Take Care of Maya tells us early on that Florida’s child welfare system has been privatized, and later revelations about how Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital billed insurance companies for Maya’s care—namely, by stating that she had the very CRPS condition they told the court she didn’t have—further suggest that a profit motive was at play when it came to separating Maya from her parents. No matter what drove Dr. Smith and company to make that decision, however, Roosevelt’s documentary persuasively contends that, in such cases, the entire child protection services system is broken, since it places all the power in the hands of a few individuals whose opinions carry enormous sway. Moreover, the system puts parents on the immediate defensive, forced to prove their innocence in the face of presumed guilt, and often compelled to give in to state-dictated demands if they ever want to be reunited with their offspring.
Through numerous video and audio recordings (many made by Beata) of doctor’s appointments, supervised phone calls between mother and daughter during Maya’s detention, and judicial hearings, Take Care of Maya transforms into a chilling vision of one family becoming trapped in a quagmire from which there is no easy escape. The attendant frustration and misery of it all became too much for Beata to bear, and—beset by police suspicions, fears that her husband was turning on her, and a series of denials to see her daughter, climaxing in a judge not even letting her hug Maya—she took her own life on Jan. 8, 2017. Shortly thereafter, Maya was released from her 92-day stay in the hospital, only to return to a home shattered beyond repair and a lingering medical ailment that was only gradually controlled by therapy.
(L to R) Maya Kowalski, Beata Kowalski, Jack Kowalski, and Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick.
In its final passages, Take Care of Maya (its title taken from Beata’s suicide note) focuses on the Kowalskis’ attempts to sue Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital for punitive damages—another hellish hardship that again underscores how the system cares more about maintaining (and protecting) itself than it does for the kids it’s nominally created to help. Maya’s grief-stricken anguish is plain for all to see in numerous interviews and deposition outbursts, and peaks with the news that her family’s trial against those who wrought so much destruction would again be delayed, perhaps indefinitely. A closing coda indicates that, this September, the Kowalskis will finally get their day in court. In the meantime, this wrenching documentary—culminating with commentary from some of the 100 other families who contacted director Roosevelt with similar tales of false-abuse-allegations woe—gives captivating voice to their sorrow and outrage.
If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. You can also text or dial 988.
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