Dr. Jessica Pryce on the Harms of the Child Welfare System

Nobody Should Believe Me

True Story Media

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In light of the overturned ruling of Kowalski v Johns Hopkins and Serial’s The Preventionist, we’re reairing an episode from our Kowalski season in which Andrea dives into the complexities around reporting child abuse suspicions. *** With the jury's stunning $242 million verdict in favor of the Kowalski family, host Andrea Dunlop looks at why this case has struck such a nerve on both sides of the political spectrum. She examines why some mothers accused of medical child abuse are viewed as monsters and others as martyrs. Andrea looks at the charges against social worker Cathy Bedy the woman who became the face of the child welfare bureaucracy during the Maya Kowalski case and examines her testimony. We also seek out answers about the troubled state of child welfare in America by talking to Dr. Jessica Pryce, author of the forthcoming book Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services—Notes of a Former Caseworker. Dr. Pryce shares heart-wrenching stories of mothers whose lives have been turned upside down by investigations and sets out a compelling and urgent case for an overhaul of CPS. With her inside view of the system, she also gives insight on how doctors and other mandated reporters can do the best for the families they want to help even within the current, deeply flawed system. This episode grapples with the complexity around reporting child abuse suspicions and the potentially chilling ripple effects of the explosive verdict in Kowalski v Johns Hopkins All Childrens. It examines the lack of support for struggling parents in America, while leaving the listener with urgent questions about justice and equity. *** Learn more about Dr. Pryce’s work on her website: https://jessicaprycephd.com/ Tickets for Nobody Should Believe Me LIVE: https://www.andreadunlop.net/nobody-should-believe-me-live Order Andrea’s book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy. Click here to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show! Subscribe on YouTube where we have full episodes and lots of bonus content. Follow Andrea on Instagram: @andreadunlop Buy Andrea's books here. For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit MunchausenSupport.com The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines can be downloaded here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	True Story Media.
0:06.0	Hello, it's Andrea, and I'm starting today with a little apology because we did not quite get the very exciting episode that we have coming for you ready in time. To be honest, making this show at the pace we make it is a challenge. And I've been trying to keep up with the preventionist stuff in real time while we are in full production mode for season seven. And it's just a lot. We will have that episode for you next week. Many shows take Thanksgiving week off, but we are not going to do that because we know that
0:38.1	you might be in the car for a long time or waiting in an airport somewhere, so we will be there with you.
0:43.2	Thank you so much for your patience. We want to make sure that we get things right, especially when we
0:47.4	are in the midst of a beef with a much larger podcast and media company. In the meantime, today, I am
0:54.1	re-airing an episode that I have been
0:55.8	thinking about a lot lately, which is my conversation with author, academic, and former social
1:00.6	worker, Dr. Jessica Price. I met Dr. Price when she and I appeared on court TV to discuss the
1:06.3	Kowalski verdict that awarded the family more than $200 million in their lawsuit against Johns Hopkins
1:11.6	All Children's. That verdict was, of course, recently reversed. Being on with Dr. Price was a
1:17.5	lightbulb moment for me because we were invited on court TV as a point counterpoint. And listening
1:22.8	to her, I thought, wait a minute, I don't disagree with this person at all. And that's because the case that Dr. Price and other abolitionists make against the child welfare system and mandatory reporting laws is not at all the argument that the people pushing the medical kidnapping narrative are making.
1:39.0	Medical kidnapping is about parents' rights.
1:41.6	And the stories being told feature parents, almost exclusively
1:44.8	white parents, who have been, at a minimum, very credibly accused of abuse severe enough to put
1:50.8	their children in the hospital. And the tactics of this argument are to blame child abuse
1:55.3	pediatricians and cast doubt on the science of child abuse medicine. This is an argument in league
2:00.6	with anti-vaxxers,
2:02.0	not abolitionists like Dr. Price. But I think many of the more liberal journalists covering
2:06.9	this issue, people like Diane Niery and Mike Hicksenbach, would like you to think they're
2:11.1	making an argument for reform or overhaul that they're not actually making. They often gesture
2:16.5	at the problems of disproportionality and
	...

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