Say what you will, there are many people in the world who are crazy in a sinister way. People with deranged mentalities who think nothing of preying on their own children when it comes to personal benefits or money. One such con artist was Theresa Milbrandt who even convinced her young daughter Hannah that she had cancer. Now 21, Hannah Milbrandt has revealed the entire story of her mother’s sinister plot just so that she could extract money by way of donations.
Hannah revealed how when she was just seven, her mother drugged her, shaved her head and hatched a plot to make the entire family including Hannah’s father believe that she had cancer. Hannah recalled in an interview her mother telling her. ‘You’re my million-dollar baby, she told me, but I didn’t know what she meant.” Theresa would go on to con the entire community for donation money amounting to $32,754.
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Hannah says she was only seven and too young to understand what it all meant. She was scared watching her dad bob reduced to tears when her mother broke the lie to him. Hannah had just returned from the doctor whom she was taken to by her mother because of a cough and fever. She was also sent for a scan. That night her mother gathered the family together and revealed that Hannah had a tumor at the base of her spine which could be terminal cancer. Hearing this her father broke down.
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After that, Hannah described how her mother then made her wear a surgical mask saying how it was important to protect her from breathing germs. From then on, Hannah says she hated the look of pity people gave her and even treated her different.
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Theirs was a small community town in Ohio who soon began to rally around the family. The church especially took an active part in organizing fundraising to meet the expensive treatments which Hannah’s mom said would be necessary. Hannah says. “The congregation was distraught and prayers were said for me. I hated the attention, but Mum was so grateful for their fundraising”.
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Theresa was a home care nurse and soon started administering medication to Hannah which she says made her feel horrible. It gave her headaches and made her exhausted all the time. Theresa was actually drugging her to make her appear actually sick. Hannah revealed how she could never ride her bike or play with friends. She even had to wear a mask to school where her mother came and notified teachers that she was extremely sick and instructed them on emergency measures in case of a seizure.
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Hannah revealed how she was yet to come to terms with the prospect of death and being separated from family. That knowledge terrified her and she began having sleepless nights. She would often beg her mother to be allowed to sleep in their room but Theresa would refuse with a stern “NO”!
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Hannah says that her mother also began to distance herself from her and was never there for Hannah when she needed her most. She says her dad would cheer her up often and show her a lot of affection but because of his job, he was away most of the time. Her father would always try and reschedule his work timings to be there for hospital appointments but invariably whenever he was around, they would be canceled at the last minute.
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Hannah revealed that it was her mother and Grandmother Mary who would take her to the so called hospital appointments but first they would feed her ice cream that mad her sleepy. By that you can well imagine where her mother may have got the idea from. When she would wake up, she recalled her mother telling her that Beth her mother’s nurse friend had given her a shot of chemo in her spine which was covered in a bandage. She says that Beth came to the house regularly but she was always asleep and would wake up with new bandages.
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Hannah said she loved her blonde hair even though she was seven. But one day during the time Beth had come to the house and as usual she was made to fall asleep. She awoke to find herself bald. Her mother told her that nurse Beth had shaved it because the chemo was making her hair fall out. She recalls how she sobbed when asking her mother “will it grow back?’ To which her mom replied “No I don’t thinks so”.
Hannah says that even at school her friends cried after seeing her in that condition and she felt odd to wear a hat. That day, her Teachers even organized a “hat for Hannah day” where all the kids wrote a hat and donated $5 for her treatment.
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Soon an article appeared in the newspaper after which her mother was flooded with donations. A large sum came from the local church to the tune of $7,000 as a result of a bake off. Even the local firestation gave her a puppy whom she named “Socks”. People also donated ring pulls form soda cans for her mother to cash in for recycling. One wheelchair bound girl also donated her entire saving she had accumulated to buy herself a cane.
Her most frightening moment came when her mother told her that she was going to die and did not have long to live.
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Hannah’s nightmare of impending death ended suddenly one day when her father, mother and grandmother were arrested. A school teacher had observed how her hair was growing back normally unlike the patchy tufts of hair becoming of a cancer patient. The teacher reported her mother to the local family services department.
Her mother admitted to interrogators her scam and how she also acquired more than $32,000 in donations. Theresa was sent to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation after she pleaded insanity while her Father was released on bail. He was overjoyed when telling her that she wasn’t really sick anymore. However, that wasn’t the end of Hannah’s nightmare as she was then put into foster care. Her Grandmother was acquitted of theft.
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Hannah says that ultimately both parents were sent to prison with her mother getting six and half years in jail. After a year in foster care, an aunt, her father’s sister gained custody of her and when she was 15, she was finally reunited with her Father who remarried. Hannah says “I’m still haunted by what Mum did, I don’t think I’ll ever truly get over it. I’m now at university, studying to be a social worker. I want to help kids in foster care, because I know how scary that can be.”
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Hannah met her mother last year when the manager at the restaurant where she worked as a part time waitress told her that a woman wanted to see her. To her shock, Hannah saw it was her mother looking old and disheveled.
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Hannah instead screamed at her and told her to leave. She says she wanted nothing to do with her after the woman had stolen her childhood. She admitted, she felt afraid just to see her near by.
Today Hannah Milbrandt is picking up the pieces. “I hope one day I’ll be able to help people who’ve been victims of abuse. I want them to know there is light at the end of the tunnel. One day, I hope to have kids of my own, and I know I’ll be the mum that monster never was to me.”
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