Mum caught committing sick act on her frail daughter, 3, as she lay in a hospital bed – & it exposed an even darker past

The Sun

20-06-2025

LYING in her hospital bed, three-year-old Alyssa was desperately ill – painfully thin and dehydrated, her little frame covered with tubes.
Her apparently doting mother Brittany Phillips sat by her side. But, when the nurses' backs were turned, she did the most unspeakably depraved act to her defenceless little girl.
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When no one was looking, Phillips smeared human faeces onto Alyssa's feeding tube in a bid to make her MORE ill.
She was aping a case she read about online concerning Emily McDonald, a 23-year-old mother from Austin who, four months earlier, had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for poisoning her daughter by putting poo onto her IV catheter.
It was later revealed that Phillips had keyed in terms to her computer like 'poo in the feeding tube' and 'pee in veins'.
Sick poisoning
Hours later, Alyssa developed a rare and extremely dangerous blood infection caused by her mother's perverted act.
Without the swift actions of doctors at Cook Children's Medical Centre – she could have suffered from heart failure, a stroke or even death.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg of the horrendous abuse Phillips had put her daughter through in her short life.
Phillips had insisted that Alyssa had to be in leg restraints for medical reasons.
She also said she needed to be fed by a tube as she choked if she ate solid food.
The little girl was emaciated and her growth stunted.
Several family members had been so concerned that they'd filed reports with the CPS in Fort Worth, Texas, but no action was taken.
Distant family members Bill and Laura Waybourn had been suspicious ever since they'd seen Alyssa at a family party a few months before.
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They'd heard Phillips warn everyone that Alyssa couldn't eat anything, if she did, she'd choke.
"We witnessed her eat a piece of cake and she didn't choke at all. She appeared to be very hungry," Waybourn said.
And his wife, a CPS worker "was suspicious".
"She got a close-up look at Alyssa and felt like something wasn't right. But nobody had any idea what was really going on behind the scenes, which was actually torturous," he told The Daily Mail.
It transpires Phillips had Munchhausen by proxy – also known as medical child abuse – where a parent or care giver fakes, exaggerates and even causes illness in their child for the purpose of getting attention or some other benefit.
A later search of her laptop revealed pages and pages of online research into the illnesses and symptoms she then tried to manufacture in her defenceless young daughter.
It also showed her prolific activity on mums' internet forums – where she catalogued Alyssa's many 'illnesses' in a bid for sympathy.
The day that changed everything
In August 2011, a few weeks after that family party, Alyssa was taken to Cook's hospital, where her mother told medics she had dehydration.
This was one of many hospital visits Alyssa had endured by the time she was three, so much so, she had spend much of her life in hospitals, and was worryingly underweight and short for her age.
Despite concerned friends and family filing several reports to CPS over the years, it was this hospital visit that set off alarm bells with medical staff.
During that day, Phillips repeatedly tried to stop Alyssa from eating, claiming she would choke, despite medical staff observing otherwise. She was aggressive and rude, and she piled blankets on her daughter then claimed she had a fever. She appeared to paint Alyssa's mouth blue and then claimed she was alarmingly cold.
Then, Phillips suddenly demanded blood tests on her daughter.
The blood test results revealed a life-threatening infection that doctors said had to have been caused by the three-year-old being poisoned.
Medics feared Phillips was abusing her child, so moved Alyssa to another room which had surveillance cameras monitoring any activity inside.
Phillips quickly noticed the cameras and was furious. Alyssa, on the other hand, under the watchful eye of a camera, rapidly got better.
So much so, hospital staff alerted the authorities and Alyssa was taken out of Phillips' care and an investigation was launched.
Following a brief period in foster care, the Waybourns took the little girl into their home, later adopting her.
In an interview, Bill Waybourn said they 'saw tremendous improvements immediately' adding: 'She started eating by mouth everything in sight. The doctors were blown away by how well she was doing.'
But over time, the Waybourns noticed trauma manifesting in Alyssa's behaviour.
'She was really protective of her food. If she had a plate of food and got down from the table for a minute and came back and the plate was gone, she would be extremely upset,' Waybourn recalled.
'She also had a funny gait where she would walk on her toes. We had to coach her out of doing that, to walk on her whole foot.'
Alyssa's reaction to medical staff and treatments was also telling.
British cases of Munchausen Syndrome revealed
In August 2016 a woman from south London has been jailed for fraud and child abuse after causing her children to undergo surgery for fictitious medical problems.
Croydon Crown Court heard the mother of six, who cannot be named for legal reasons, persuaded doctors to prescribe copious medication and provide equipment for her children worth more than £145,000, which - as they did not require it - was potentially dangerous for them, the prosecution said.
She also convinced them to perform invasive operations and insert feeding tubes into her son and daughter's stomachs.
Serial killer nurse Beverly Allitt, dubbed the Angel of Death was given 13 life sentences in 1993 for murdering four children, attempting to murder another three and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to further six at Grantham and Kesteven hospital in Lincolnshire.
The former nurse was diagnosed as suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP) when she carried out the attacks between 1991 and 1993.
In January 2010, Lisa Hayden-Johnson was sentenced to three years and three months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of child cruelty and perverting the course of justice – in one of the most notable examples of Munchausens by proxy.
Hayden-Johnson began her deceitful actions shortly after the birth of her son Matthew in 2001. Claiming he was afflicted with numerous severe health issues, including cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and severe food allergies, she subjected him to unnecessary medical procedures and interventions. These included the use of a wheelchair, feeding tubes, and numerous hospital visits, totalling over 325 medical encounters.
'If you took her to a doctor or a paediatrician - even for something small like an earache - she would just totally freeze up,' he said.
'Those were all things we saw in the beginning. That went on for a long time.'
Waybourn says a 'big fear' for him and Laura was that Phillips would try to regain custody of Alyssa.
Terrifyingly she was allowed to visit at the beginning – up until the time Alyssa developed a rash after her mother had given her new toys.
The Waybourns were sure she had put a substance on them to cause it. After that she wasn't allowed to see her.
Over the years Alyssa has told her adopted parents some of what she endured.
She confided that her mother used to pull her feeding tube in and out.
She also coached her to choke in the doctor's surgery.
In 2015, aged seven, she testified against her mother in court.
Cuddling a teddy bear, she raised her T-shirt to reveal the physical evidence of her mother's torture – a scar on her stomach from unnecessary surgery to insert the feeding tube.
Mental scarring
No one will ever know the extent of the mental scarring.
Despite her mother's actions though, Alyssa, who's now 17, is flourishing.
'Alyssa is not a victim,' Waybourn says. 'She is a thriving little woman and I couldn't be more proud of her.'
Phillips' original court case was declared a mistrial. But soon after, in exchange for a five-year prison sentence, Phillips pleaded guilty to serious bodily injury to a child.
In April 2022, a couple of years after she was released from prison, Phillips was found dead from an apparent overdose.
According to Waybourn, Alyssa was initially teary. She went for some time alone in her room, and then when she came out she said: 'I'm free, free at last.'
Finally she knew that her mother could never hurt her again.
Alyssa's story is told in a book by Andrea Dunlop and Mike Weber entitled The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception and Munchausen by Proxy.
Mike Weber, a now-retired Tarrant County investigator worked on Phillips' case.
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