10Donations started pouring in
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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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11A school teacher discovers the scam
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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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12Reunited with her father
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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.”
Image Source: mirror.co.uk