One Direction’s two members posed for photographs outside a charity ball at London’s Natural History Museum on August 10, 2015, as crowds of fans applauded and waved. The real stars, however, were a group of seriously ill kids who were decked out in gowns and suits, some with caregivers by their sides, and some who were in the middle of chemotherapy.
This “Cinderella Ball” provided Megan Bhari and her mother Jean with yet another opportunity to raise money for their rapidly expanding charity, Believe in Magic. They have fulfilled hundreds of seriously ill children’s wishes over the past two years, including parties and trips to Disneyland.
Also known to the attendees was the fact that Megan, a 20-year-old who had organized the ball while openly fighting her own brain tumor, was 20. One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson told the audience that working with Believe in Magic is an “incredible privilege.”. However, there was a secret involving one of the medical community’s most puzzling syndromes hidden behind the ball gowns and themed masks.
Megan.
Megan’s experience with illness served as the source of inspiration for Believe in Magic. Megan and her mother Jean shared a largely typical suburban life after her parents divorced when she was a young child. However, Megan was given the diagnosis of idiopathic intracranial hypertension, a pressure buildup in the brain, when she was just 13 years old.
A few years later, Jean informed Megan’s friends that she had also been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Megan, who was 16 at the time, was motivated by the experience to found Believe in Magic in order to cheer up children in excruciating pain.
a Megan selfie.
The pair toiled assiduously for their charity despite Jean’s frequent online posts about Megan’s daily cocktail of medications and frequent hospital visits. Megan, Jean, and their nonprofit organization gained notoriety for hosting ritzy parties and supporting One Direction.
Lucy Petagine, whose daughter Luna attended a number of the events, remarked that “it was out of this world.”. “Every single child felt extremely important, and they were all in good health. “.
When David Cameron, the UK’s former prime minister, presented Megan with an award in 2015, he praised her for having “extraordinary courage.”.
However, Jean revealed that Megan’s brain tumor had gotten worse and that she needed to raise £120,000 for urgent life-saving treatment in the US at the height of Believe in Magic’s popularity. Rapid assistance from Megan’s supporters allowed them to reach the goal in less than 48 hours.
But one group of worried parents in the community of parents with children with cancer didn’t believe Megan was as ill as she claimed.
parents who became investigators.
Jo Ashcroft experienced distress when she initially saw Megan’s JustGiving appeal on Facebook in the beginning of 2015. Jo raised £250,000 for a successful cutting-edge treatment in the US after learning that her son had neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nervous system.
Jo felt that there was something off about Megan’s appeal. No particular physician or facility was mentioned.
She remembers feeling “a little suspicious.”.
I merely wanted to ensure that the funds were being used appropriately.
“.
Three of her friends who also had children with neuroblastoma concurred that it was unusual when Jo spoke to them. However, they cautioned against making false accusations because it was impossible to conceal a brain tumor.
After polite inquiries to Jean and other allies went unanswered, Jo returned to managing the family business and caring for her three children. Jo noticed Megan and Jean fundraising again a year later. Jean had informed Jo that Megan was in a hospital in America and was in critical condition and required additional funds.
Jo promised to find the truth this time, along with the other worried parents. It became completely consuming, she claims. “I do not want people to be taken advantage of, especially not in the cancer community. “.
She used a pseudonym and even pretended to be a journalist writing a story about Megan, but she failed once more. However, one of the group members used their knowledge of computers to figure out where Jean and Megan were accessing their emails. There was no hospital there. It was a posh hotel located at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
private detective.
A few weeks later, at Southampton docks, Megan and her mother Jean boarded the Queen Mary II cruise ship.
They were fortunate to be back at all, according to Jean. She had pleaded with supporters to contribute to her fund-raising efforts throughout the summer, explaining that Megan had “16 sources of infections” and severe sepsis. She claimed that at one point, medical professionals predicted Megan had a 10% chance of surviving the following seven days.
However, she claimed that as a result of their efforts, Megan’s condition had stabilized, and the Florida medical professionals had permitted her to fly back home with five cases of medical supplies and a “huge oxygen concentrator.”.
However, a private detective was already there when they arrived at the cruise terminal. Jo paid him £1,000 to take pictures of the couple because she was so determined to learn the truth.
Megan and Jean appeared in the photos to be smiling tourists as they left the ship.
Oxygen tanks were absent.
They walked right past the porters while pushing luggage trollies loaded with cases, the investigator claimed, while laughing and chit-chatting.
We emailed Jean to find out why she and Megan were at a Disney resort when Megan was allegedly critically ill in a US hospital. It’s very simple to fall for social media lies, she said, without responding. “.
With this new proof in hand, the worried parents contacted every institution they could think of, but it seemed that no one would step in. Therefore, they made the decision to create a Facebook group called “The Truth About Meg And Jean” where they could share their findings. The majority of Meg and Jean’s supporters, however, did not accept it. Many people had witnessed Megan’s poor health firsthand, including the intravenous tubes in her arm and medication.
Jo received a lot of hate mail, but she was sure she had made the right decision. Then, in the first quarter of 2018, Jo’s phone buzzed. Megan passed away.
the investigation.
At London’s National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Megan had passed away on March 28, 2018.
Her mother posted on Facebook that all she had ever said to her daughter was, “Darling, if you want to go, please go and be happy.”.
Jo was in awe. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end, she claims.
Who was at fault was clear in the eyes of Megan’s supporters. “She was hounded to death,” wrote one on Facebook. But Jo remained convinced that Megan didn’t have a brain tumour.
line.
Identifying mark for the podcast Believe in Magic.
Listen to the Believe in Magic podcast with Jamie Bartlett on BBC Sounds.
line.
A coroner looks into the circumstances surrounding a death when the cause is unknown. In late 2018, an inquest into Megan’s death took place.
We were given permission to go to the coroner’s court in early 2022 and hear a recording of the evidence presented at the inquest four years earlier.
For two hours, we listened to doctors explain what they had seen. Megan had certainly been unwell – over the years she had suffered from several conditions, but all in theory manageable.
But the inquest dealt a shocking blow to the claims Megan and Jean had made over the years. Jo was right – there was no mention of a tumour. According to the forensic pathologist, her brain had been “morphologically normal”.
Several doctors however listed other worrying details. One had concerns about the validity of Megan’s medical history. Another noted Megan’s “opiate-seeking” behaviour. There was an attempt to obtain morphine using a forged prescription. Megan repeatedly missed medical appointments and hopped from doctor to doctor.
It wasn’t a tumour that killed Megan, but an abnormality of the rhythm of the heart – acute cardiac arrhythmia – due to fatty liver disease, likely related to Megan’s high body mass index.
Jean did not want to be interviewed, but told us via email that Megan did have a pituitary microadenoma – a type of non-cancerous brain tumour which, while not typically life-threatening, can be harmful.
The sisters.
Megan had four older half-siblings, Jean’s children from a previous marriage. “I was 12 when Meg was born,” says Megan’s half-sister Kate, whose name we’ve changed. “I just adored her. “.
According to Kate, Megan and Jean had a strange relationship with illness. If someone they knew was unwell, sooner or later they’d hear Megan had the same.
Kate remembers family dinners laced with danger. Jean piled tins precariously on top of empty food cupboards which would roll off and hit the dining table directly below – so often that it was covered in dents and divots.
“Jean wanted one of us to have an accident,” believes Kate. “The whole thrill of it. The attention. “.
For Megan’s other half-sister Rachel – whose name we’ve also changed – it’s even more personal. When she was nine, she was affected by a rash that caused kidney problems. Over the years, her condition deteriorated, and she needed a transplant.
After Megan died, Rachel had vivid memories of being fed cups and cups of salty Bovril as a child – even though high salt content is something you should avoid with kidney problems.
She now wonders: “Only I got Bovril. So, was it a deliberate thing?”.
Munchausen.
In 1951, a physician called Richard Asher published a ground-breaking paper in the medical journal The Lancet. While running a mental observation unit, he noticed a small but consistent number of patients complaining of various symptoms, but on closer inspection were perfectly healthy.
He called it “Munchausen syndrome”. It differs from hypochondria. Hypochondriacs exaggerate and panic, but really do think they’re ill. Munchausen patients know they aren’t, but seek treatment anyway.
Prof Marc Feldman is one of the world’s most renowned experts on factitious disorders like Munchausen syndrome. He also studies Munchausen by proxy, now known in the UK as Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII), a rare form of child abuse where a parent or carer exaggerates or deliberately causes symptoms of illness in the child. Because it involves deception, he thinks the condition is more widespread than people realise.
Prof Feldman never met Megan or Jean, and hasn’t seen Megan’s medical records. But based on our detailed account of what we’ve discovered, he says Megan’s case “screams” of FII.
Megan was 23 when she died, so legally an adult. But she was still a child when the charity was started. We will never know for sure who was driving this behaviour, or what Megan really thought of it all.
Feldman explains the line between child and consenting adult might be clear in legal terms – but not always in practice: “If you learn throughout your whole lifetime that there are certain things you’re allowed to say and think… you become cooperative. “.
One Direction.
People fake illness – either in themselves or others – for lots of reasons. Some do it for money. Sometimes it’s a wish to be listened to or looked after. For parents, it can be a desire to be the heroic caregiver. Sometimes it’s a mixture.
For Megan and Jean, one motive might have been to run a much-loved charity – Megan being seen as having a life-threatening brain tumour herself may have helped Believe in Magic reach more children. At a Believe in Magic event at the Tower of London, a former friend recalls Jean observing: “The sicker Meg is, the more attention we get, the more money we make. “.
Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson arrive at the “Cinderella Ball” at the National History Museum in 2015.
Megan’s sister Kate thinks that the brain tumour and Believe in Magic were partly driven by a desire to rub shoulders with celebrities. After repeatedly tweeting members of One Direction, the band became supporters of the charity, allowing Megan and Jean to meet the stars.
The Kingston review.
In 2017 – a year before Megan died – the Charity Commission opened an investigation into Believe in Magic, following several tip-offs from Jo.
They found more than £100,000 was unaccounted for, and that charity money had been transferred into Jean’s personal bank account. In 2020, the charity was dissolved and Jean agreed not to be a trustee or in a senior management position in any charity for five years.
Just a few months after Believe in Magic was shut down, Jean disappeared from public view. She moved to France for a while, before returning to the UK last year.
But that was not the end of the story. In November 2022, Kingston Council – where Megan had been living – published a “Safeguarding Adult Review” into what had happened. These are rare investigations into cases where people may have been let down by the authorities. As is standard, the names are all changed, but because of how much we’ve learned about the case, we have no doubt it’s about Megan.
It concluded: “Despite there being no formal diagnosis of FII (Fabricated or Induced Illness) in this case, the presentation and coroner’s conclusion lead all involved to think it was likely to have been FII. “.
This review does not suggest that FII caused Megan’s death. It cites the cause of death given in the coroner’s inquest: cardiac arrhythmia, due to fatty liver disease. But it nevertheless highlights how the FII in Megan’s case could have been missed.
FII is recognised as something that can happen to children, because parents attend their medical appointments, and are responsible for giving consent for treatments. There’s far less understanding about how it can happen to vulnerable adults too. Because Megan was an adult for much of this story, doctors and social workers lacked the training and tools to identify her situation as a case of FII while she was still alive.
We asked Jean to respond to the findings of the Kingston review. She did not directly address what was found, but did say: “I loved and cared for my daughter. Suggesting I might have harmed her in any way at all is absolutely sickening. “.
It’s too late for Megan, but according to FII expert Dr Danya Glaser, this review could change how similar cases are understood and managed.
“The Kingston review is extremely significant,” she explained. “It brings to people’s attention the fact that FII can continue into adulthood. “.
A few days after the review was published, we visited Kate and Rachel to tell them about it – even Megan’s sisters had no idea it had taken place. Neither have spoken to their mother for several years. When they asked her difficult questions about Megan and Believe in Magic, Jean cut them out of her life, they say.
“It’s a good thing to have. It’s all there in black and white,” says Rachel, reading the report. “We thought it had all been forgotten. ” She thinks back to her kidney transplant and wonders what this report means for her too.
They both hope it might help prevent something similar happening again.
“Megan was a victim,” says Kate. “She was groomed for this. “.
