LOVE GONE WRONG

She said her little girl was seriously ill but police now believe it’s a case of medical child abuse

- MAXINE PETERS

FAMILY pictures of her with her two little girls are enough to tug at the heartstrings – an adoring mom and the children she fell so in love with on a mission to Africa that she had to adopt them and bring them home.

Many more people fell in love with Miah and Carmel too after Sophie Hartman used Facebook and YouTube to share her unique family’s story. She also detailed how their paths crossed in a book called Crowns of Beauty.

The little girls were her whole life, the single mom from Renton, Washington, said. Sophie (31) made it her priority to keep people up to date about six-year old Carmel’s daily struggles with alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC), a rare neurological condition that causes bouts of weakness and paralysis.

Carmel was put in leg braces to help her walk and had to go under the knife for surgeries to install a feeding tube as well as a tube to flush out her intestines.

Since the age of two she’d been in hospital a staggering 474 times, undergoing various procedures and treatments.

But earlier this year staff at the hospital began to suspect something was going on.

They notified the department of children and youth in the city, saying they suspected foul play and Carmel was removed from her mother’s care while specialists conducted a 16-day observation and various tests on the child.

“Genetic testing could not identify a variant in the disease associated with the AHC disorder,” Dr Mark Wainwright of Seattle Children’s Hospital wrote in his report. It was also found that Carmel could walk without leg braces.