Mary Rocha has known more tragedy than any mother could imaginably endure.
Her daughter Leah died of cancer last year, while another daughter, Kai, passed away from severe burns in the same year. She has two other daughters, Maddie and Ally, who are both fighting cancer, one daughter has it in her spine, while the other has it in her hip.
Maddie is already lucky to be alive after being bitten by a deadly copperhead snake … but the devastating tragedy for Mary’s family does not end there.
One night, Mary left her son, Andres, with her boyfriend while she was tending to one of the girls in hospital and her boyfriend threw the three-year-old against a piece of furniture in a rage and the child died from the injuries he sustained.
Mary’s other son has ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome. The unfortunate woman bears all of this sorrow and hardship alone because the father of her children passed away suddenly leaving her to fend for herself and her babies.
Mary is very active on Facebook and in online support groups where networks of people are also helping their children overcome adversities such as abuse or cancer. Together they face their challenges and draw love, strength and sympathy from each other.
But if hearing about Mary’s misfortune leaves you incredulous that one person could suffer so much adversity then you would be right.
Mary is a fraud. She has multiple names, and multiple Facebook accounts. She steals images of other people’s sick children and passes them off as her own.
Ines’ photoshopped picture with someone else’s children
Munchausen Syndrome is a condition named after Baron Munchausen, a fictional German nobleman who told the most fantastic tall tales. Munchausen Syndrome – where someone fakes illness or makes themselves ill- and Munchausen by Proxy – where someone makes their child or someone else ill, now known as Fabricated or Induced Illness by Carers (FIIC) – are two shocking disorders that have been well documented over the years, but with the rise of social media a new malady has been born – Munchausen by Internet.
Although the traditional forms of Munchausen are considered mental disorders, this new morphed version is virtually ignored by psychiatric associations.
“MBI is not universally considered to be a mental disorder, partly due to a lack of clarity about whether it really is, and partly due to the slowness in the movement of the field,” says author of Playing Sick, and M.D of the University of Alabama, Marc D. Feldman who has been working in the Munchausen field for 25 years.
“The American Psychiatric Association has, to my knowledge, never even been approached about making MBI a mental disorder; indeed, the APA rarely acknowledges that social media exists!”
Social media not only exists, but it is also taking up such a large portion of our lives, therefore opening entire floodgates to people seeking to engage in this bizarre treachery.
“I think we are seeing more MBI cases these days, mostly because of the ubiquity of computer/internet access and social media. For someone with a proclivity to engage in deceptive behaviour, it is now remarkably easy to pull it off,” says Dr Feldman.
“It used to be that Munchausen patients had to go to medical libraries to research their chosen ailments, then fake or induce symptoms convincingly enough to mislead doctors in emergency rooms, hospitals, and doctors’ offices. Now they need merely to click to access sympathetic, caring communities online. If they don’t get ‘enough’ care and concern, or if they are discovered, they can log off and then sign into a new group.”
Sometimes what may begin as a remarkably easy deception may spiral out of control, and although it may not be illegal to weave the web of lies, some MBI sufferers may get tangled in their own webs which can lead to an array of repercussions.
Disgraced blogger, Belle Gibson
Recently Australian wellness blogger, Belle Gibson, was exposed for creating an online empire built upon lies about suffering terminal brain cancer and healing herself with wholefoods.
After being exposed as a hoax by The Australian Women’s Weekly, Belle became one of the most maligned women in the county, because her followers were cut deeply by the profound betrayal of believing in someone who fed them nothing but lies.
“The backlash is beyond horrible,” she told The Weekly in an interview in 2015. “In the last two years, I have worked every single day living and raising up an online community of people who supported each other … I understand the confusion and suspicion, but I also know that people need to draw a line in the sand where they still treat someone with some level of respect or humility – and I have not been receiving that.”
But during her rise, Belle didn’t just gain sympathy and support from her community. She created a business and an income, which she also claimed to be sharing proceeds back to charity thereby defrauding her followers of $300,000. And yet she asks for respect during her fall.
Still seeking sympathy in the face of exposure is typical of MBI according to professional hoax hunter of Warrior Eli Hoax Group, Taryn Harper Wright. She believes that people spin such an all-encompassing web that they begin to believe their own stories and they cannot stop the lies.
“It’s something that they’re compelled to do, in some cases it’s something they can’t control” says Wright.
Wright was working as a futures trader four years ago when she stumbled across blog and Facebook page, Warrior Eli, documenting the journey of a family that according to her “didn’t pass the sniff test.”
The Facebook post that began it all for Taryn harper Wright
Their son had been battling cancer for years and the mother, a trauma surgeon had just been killed on Mother’s Day but she held out until her 11th child was born at hospital before she slipped away. It just didn’t add up and Taryn was compelled to dig deeper before finally exposing the young female medical student who had created 81 Facebook personalities to keep Warrior Eli ruse alive.
“I started putting the images she’d stolen of sick kids on a WordPress site so that I could send it to everybody whose pictures they had stolen, and I ended up getting comments and emails and people were really interested in finding out more about it, and then it just kept going.”
When people began sending Taryn links to blogs and Facebook pages she began investigating more cases of Munchausen by Internet and shattering people’s deceptions.
“I’ve always been interested in the psychology of lying, and I discovered it’s something I’m good at. I’m good at not villainising the people who do this, but I realised that I’m making a big impact on the people who have been lied to,” she says.
“It’s a huge betrayal, because a lot of the time the people who are being lied to are at the worst time of their lives. They have kids with cancer, or they’re sick with something so it’s a gigantic betrayal without a doubt.”
Munchausen Syndrome is typically believed not to be treatable, but Taryn has found that after exposing many of the cases of Munchausen by Internet, people realise that their online deception is wrong and they vow to change their ways.
“I have had people contact me and say ‘Hey, if you didn’t stop me from doing that, I’d still be doing that, and now I’ve gone out and done stuff in the real world.’ Some people are very grateful to realise the impact their deception has on people. It might take them a while to get there, but they do in the end.”
The Weekly has made an effort to contact Mary Rocha, if anyone had any information please contact [email protected]
