SUSPECTED FLORIDA MUNCHAUSEN TRIAL
				July 20 Update (Opening Statements) July 21 Update July 22 Update Aug. 3 Update Aug. 26 Update Sept. 29 Update Oct. 5 Update Oct. 6 Update Oct. 7 (The Verdict)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Court TV) — A nurse who helped care for alleged abuse victim Jennifer Bush told Florida jurors Wednesday that she never saw the girl's mother, Kathy, mistreat the child during her six years of service.

After a three-week hiatus, the child abuse trial of Kathy Bush resumed earlier this week with the defense beginning its case Tuesday. Florida prosecutors believe that Bush made her daughter chronically sick over a two-year period. Between August 1993 and April 1995, Bush took Jennifer to the hospital on 130 separate occasions. Jennifer Bush underwent approximately 40 surgeries for chronic illnesses such as immune system deficiency, gastrointestinal problems and seizure disorders.

Bush has denied abusing her daughter, claiming Jennifer was legitimately and critically-ill. According to Bush's attorney, Robert Buschel, Jennifer was critically-ill and had a gastrointestinal illness and immune system deficiency disorder that was genetic — her older brothers, who are now healthy, suffered from the same illnesses. However, since being taken out of her mother's care and placed with foster parents, Jennifer's health has improved drastically.

The defense claims Jennifer's health has improved because of the last surgical procedure on her intestines. Buschel also has argued that Jennifer's health began to improve before she was taken from her mother, that she began to eat normally instead of through feeding tubes — Robin Helfan, a home health-care nurse who worked for the Bushes between 1989 and 1995, agreed.

"It wasn't suddenly that she [Jennifer] began to eat solid foods because she had been improving," Helfan testified Wednesday. "She gradually ate more over a five-year period ... I never saw Kathy Bush do anything."

According to Helfan, Jennifer's health was improving when child abuse charges were brought against her mother in 1996 and she was taken away from her parents. Even before her removal, Jennifer was eating solid foods, such as Chicken McNuggets, and was finicky about her food, the nurse said. Jennifer was following a basic medical plan that would have resulted in the removal of her feeding tubes around the time she was placed with foster parents, Helfan said.

Another defense witness, psychologist Joseph Rabinovitz, also told jurors Wednesday that he never suspected Jennifer was abused but noted that she occassionally seemed week and did not look healthy in her five years of therapy.

When prosecutors first charged Kathy Bush with child abuse they alleged that she suffers from Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, an illness that causes parents to harm or fabricate illnesses in their children in order to get attention for themselves. They intended to prove she suffered from the mental disorder at the beginning of the trial in July.

But prosecutors ran into several roadblocks. They apparently have struggled with a pretrial ruling by presiding Judge Victor Tobin that prohibited specific mention of Bush's alleged Munchausen disorder until evidence about it was introduced in court. In late July, Judge Tobin even had to suspend the trial for a week to give prosecutors a chance to organize some 3,000 pages of Jennifer's voluminous medical records. In an embarrassing moment in court, the late Joe DiMaggio's medical records had somehow gotten mixed in with Jennifer's files.

Before the three-week break, it seemed that prosecutors had backed away from their Munchausen theory, avoiding specific mention of the disease while having witnesses suggest that Bush fabricated or induced her daughter's illnesses.

Bush defense's may rest by the end of the week. If convicted of child abuse, Kathy Bush could face 15 years in prison.

—Bryan Robinson