On a Friday afternoon in November 2016, the state of Florida, acting on the hospital’s recommendation, removed Maya from her parents' custody. The courts issued a "no contact" order. Beata and Jack were not allowed to see, call, or even FaceTime their daughter. Maya, who was only ten years old, was now a ward of the state, trapped on the 10th floor of the hospital, surrounded by guards and strangers.
She was 43 years old.
Initially, it seemed like a sanctuary. Doctors finally gave the pain a name: . Often described as the "suicide disease," CRPS is a neurological condition that causes extreme, chronic pain disproportionate to the initial injury. At the time, the gold standard for treating pediatric CRPS was a controversial but effective protocol involving high-dose ketamine infusions—a treatment Beata had researched extensively and which had brought Maya back from the brink of catatonia in the past. Take Care of Maya
When the family moved to Florida and Maya was admitted to JHACH with a flare-up of CRPS, the hospital’s medical team, led by Dr. Sally Smith, immediately cast doubt on the diagnosis and the treatment. In their view, the ketamine protocol was dangerous and unproven. But more insidiously, they began to interpret Maya’s behavior—her flinching, her crying, her dependence on her mother—not as symptoms of CRPS, but as evidence of a psychiatric disorder: “medical child abuse,” formerly known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy. This is where the film’s central philosophical tension emerges. Medicine prides itself on objectivity, on the measurable, the visible, the testable. But in the face of a condition like CRPS, objectivity becomes a weapon. The absence of a clear physical cause was not seen as a limitation of current science, but as proof of maternal fabrication. On a Friday afternoon in November 2016, the
Take Care of Maya resonates far beyond true crime or medical drama enthusiasts. It strikes a nerve because it explores three universal fears: Maya, who was only ten years old, was
In the pantheon of true-crime documentaries, few have landed with the raw, devastating emotional force of Take Care of Maya . Directed by Henry Roosevelt, the film chronicles the harrowing ordeal of the Kowalski family—Jack, Beata, and their daughter Maya—as they navigate a rare pediatric pain condition, a fraught relationship with a world-renowned hospital, and the ultimate catastrophe: the state’s removal of a child from parents who, by all available evidence, loved her fiercely. On its surface, the film is a searing indictment of the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (JHACH) and the child protective services system in Pinellas County, Florida. But beneath that legal and medical drama lies a far more profound tragedy: a collision between two seemingly inalienable goods—parental advocacy and institutional authority—and the devastating consequences that ensue when one refuses to see the humanity in the other.