“My mother still believes she did the right thing”. Years after discovering that many of the illnesses that shaped his childhood had been fabricated, Matthew Johnson says his mother still does not acknowledge the harm she caused him.
For more than six years, Lisa Hayden-Johnson made people believe that her son suffered from illnesses such as diabetes, cerebral palsy, and cystic fibrosis. To keep the deception going, she even manipulated medical samples, and Matthew ended up receiving treatments he did not need.
He was even fed through a tube directly into his stomach because people were led to believe he had difficulty eating. His story made it onto television, he met the current Queen Camilla, and the family received gifts and benefits while he was presented as “Britain’s sickest child”.
The truth eventually came to light, and Lisa was sentenced to prison in 2010. Matthew went into foster care and later settled in Sheffield, where he says he was finally able to start over: “I always like to say that my life practically began when I was in Sheffield”.
Today he is trying to build a life away from that childhood, although one thing still weighs on him: that his mother remains convinced that her actions were what was best for him.