TAKE CARE OF MAYA (2023)

TAKE CARE OF MAYA is a Netflix documentary on the harrowing experience of Maya Kowalski and her family when they sought medical care for Maya at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital and began a fight against the medical establishment and government tyranny that continues today. TAKE CARE OF MAYA is a gripping documentary about two individuals, a loving Christian father and mother, who fight to reclaim their child from a hospital that became a prison, but there is brief foul language and sad references to a suicide.

When Jack and Beata Kowalski’s daughter, Maya, develops strange symptoms of extreme lethargy, inexplicable pain, internal burning sensations, etc. the medical field is baffled until a physician, Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick, diagnoses her with CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. After undergoing a rare treatment called a Ketamine Coma, she awakes much better.

Maya suffers a relapse under the stress of a hurricane, however, and her parents take her to the ER at Johns Hopkins All Children Hospital for relief. There, her rare disorder and prescribed means of dealing with it are misunderstood by many at this venerable medical institution. Nurses, doctors and social workers begin jumping to conclusions and bring allegations of medical child abuse against her parents, especially the mother. Maya is eventually taken into Florida state custody. Her parents begin a long legal battle to reclaim their daughter from the grip of self-appointed medical experts and state governmental regulators. The government allegations against the family have terrible consequences. A final trial is scheduled for September 2023 in a lawsuit between the Kowalskis and Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.

TAKE CARE OF MAYA is a gripping documentary. Interviews with the Kowalski family, doctors, advocates, and Daphne Chen, the reporter who broke this important story in 2019, are well edited and powerful. The filmmakers tell the story with compassion and pointed direction.

The story of the Kowalski family’s tragedy is truly heartbreaking. Even more so when one realizes that the Kowalski family was by no means alone in being preyed upon by the medical experts and one particularly diabolical social worker. It is a telling reflection on how any institution, even one whose members take an oath to “do no harm,” may become truly inhuman when it centralizes power in a collective of medical and state bureaucrats. Many more people will be watching the September 2023 trial with great interest because of this excellent documentary movie. If ever there was a movie to teach people not to trust “the experts,” this is it.

TAKE CARE OF MAYA has a strong biblical worldview where two individuals, a loving Christian father and mother, fight to reclaim their child from a hospital that became a prison. Their love and self-sacrifice are the heart of the story. They suffered immense psychological and emotional pressure from the tyrannical state-backed medical collective.

TAKE CARE OF MAYA makes one of the strongest cases against state interference in the family in years. The attorney for the Kowalski family, Debra M. Salisbury, puts it very forthrightly: “Child Protective Service investigators have incredible power to remove children. All they have to prove is that there’s probable cause that there could be harm to the child. . . . I now refer to it as the Child Welfare Industry.” Like any unbiblical centralization of power in elite bureaucrats is very chilling. It should remind Christians, especially parents, that they “must obey God, rather than man.” (Acts 5:29)

Maya’s mother prays a potent prayer in one scene, where she prays, “Lord Jesus, I now take you precious blood and sprinkle it over Maya and my family. I surrender my family to you.” “We build a family with love, honesty, trust,” Maya’s father reflects. “We as parents try to do the best we can for our children. You do everything for them.” Hopefully, the Kowalski family will find justice in their lawsuit against the children’s hospital.

TAKE CARE OF MAYA has some brief foul language and references to a suicide and its sad aftermath. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong caution.