MUNCHAUSEN BY PROXY ABUSE
We are currently offering this course both in the online learning format and in the in-person learning format. If you want to access the online program, click the link above, but if you would like to inquire about bringing this course to your agency in-person, send us an inquiry to info@ncacia.org.
This NCACIA course is a two-day, in-person training. Topics of instruction will include:
Day 1: MBPA Foundations, Medical Abuse, and Offender Behavior
The first day establishes a working understanding of Munchausen by Proxy Abuse (MBPA), with a primary focus on medical abuse and the behaviors used to create, maintain, and conceal it. Participants examine how related patterns of deception can appear in healthcare, legal, and educational settings.
Participants will explore:
• MBPA Foundations: Definitions, patterns of harm, and the relationship between caregiver deception, professional decision-making, and a child's safety.
• Medical Abuse Presentations: Fabricated, exaggerated, misrepresented, or induced symptoms, unnecessary medical care, treatment interference, and manipulation of medical histories.
• Offender Behavior: Impression management, credibility building, control of information, exploitation of professional roles, and responses to scrutiny or limits.
• Legal and Educational Deception: How misleading narratives, records, and claims may influence courts, schools, service providers, and other systems.
• Evidence Development: Reconstructing timelines, comparing caregiver reports with records and observations, identifying contradictions, and testing alternative explanations.
• Multidisciplinary Response: Coordinating investigators, medical professionals, child protection personnel, and other team members to document concerns and support child safety.
Day 2: Legal Deception, Offender Interviewing, and Statement Analysis
The second day applies these foundations to legal deception cases, including parental alienation behaviors and false allegations of abuse. Participants examine how offender narratives and conduct can shape investigations, family relationships, and legal proceedings.
Topics include:
• Legal Deception Patterns: Misuse of allegations, selective disclosure, repeated or shifting claims, and efforts to recruit professionals into a misleading account.
• Parental Alienation Behaviors: Denigration, interference with relationships, coaching, pressure on a child, and other conduct relevant to an evidence-based assessment.
• Evaluating Abuse Allegations: Examining corroboration, disclosure history, source independence, and competing explanations. Distinguishing deliberate fabrication from mistaken reports, unresolved concerns, and substantiated abuse.
• Offender Interview Preparation: Reviewing records, mapping the subject's prior accounts, identifying evidence gaps, and planning questions around specific conduct and decisions.
• Interviewing Principles: Building rapport, obtaining a detailed account, exploring explanations, managing blame shifting and minimization, and introducing evidence strategically while avoiding coercion.
• Statement Analysis Considerations: Assessing narrative change, attribution of knowledge, distancing, qualified denials, omissions, and internal or external inconsistencies as issues to examine through follow-up and corroboration.
• Case Application: Integrating behavioral observations, interviews, records, and statement analysis into a documented investigative assessment.
Upon completion, participants will be better prepared to recognize MBPA-related concerns, examine medical and legal deception, plan offender interviews, and assess statements alongside corroborative evidence. The course is designed for investigators, child protection professionals, prosecutors, medical and mental health professionals, and multidisciplinary team members.