Cops Say Mom Poisoned Girl For Fame

Two years ago at a rally hosted by the White House, little Jennifer Bush sat beside first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a virtual poster child for the administration’s attempt to reform health care.

Jennifer - suffering from a mysterious stomach ailment - has been hospitalized more than 200 times and survived more than 40 surgeries in her eight years upon the earth.

Her insurance lapsed, her family’s finances were said to be wiped out,

Jennifer’s plight was heart-breaking and politically pointed news. She was featured in reports in USA Today and on NBC’s “Today” show.

On Monday, police arrested her mother, Kathleen Bush, on charges of a bizarre form of child abuse, of “willful torture,” accusing her of making her daughter sick by somehow poisoning her with medications and allegedly contaminating her feeding tubes, perhaps with feces, according to a 40-page police affidavit.

In an arrest warrant, based on interviews with 14 physicians and 20 nurses, Hollywood, Fla., Police Department child abuse investigators describe years of painful exams and surgeries that police say were unnecessary, including the removal of Jennifer’s gallbladder, appendix and a portion of her intestines.

The police charge that Bush is guilty of a severe strain of child abuse called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy - in which a caregiver, usually a mother, makes her child sick or gives false medical information in order to get attention for herself.

Many of the nurses interviewed by police described how Jennifer seemed to get sick after visits by her attentive mother.

Coral Springs Medical Center nurse Donna Santacrose “recalled one particular incident,” according to the affidavit, “when Mrs. Bush came into (Jennifer’s) room and closed the curtain around the bed. (Jennifer) began to cry and say, ‘no, no, no.’

“She (nurse Santacrose) looked through the crack in the curtain and saw Mrs. Bush injecting a substance into (Jennifer’s) mouth with an oral syringe.”

Other nurses in the arrest affidavit describe how the dosages for Jennifer’s feeding bags seemed to increase dangerously when the child was left alone with her mother.

Bush is also charged with fraud for allegedly obtaining unnecessary medical goods and services for the girl.

The mother has claimed that medical bills, the vast majority of which were paid by Medicaid and the state, reached $3 million.