A Florida woman who poisoned her baby to the point of liver failure and then launched a fundraising site for the sick child was sentenced on Wednesday to 12 years in prison, PEOPLE confirms.
Shauna Dee Taylor, 40, was convicted in August of aggravated child abuse and child neglect stemming from the 2013 poisoning of her baby with iron supplements, according to a prosecutor’s spokesman.
According to a state attorney’s office news release, Taylor, of Macclenny, has 10 children and a history of medical child abuse against all of them. Authorities arrested her after anonymous tipsters to a child abuse hotline said she had Munchausen by proxy, a type of medical child abuse in which a guardian exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy.
The tips also alerted authorities to Taylor’s Facebook page, which guided visitors to a fundraising site for her baby.
The child had been born premature in November 2012 and was released to Taylor’s care in February 2013, according to the prosecutor’s news release. But in the ensuing days, Taylor made three trips to the hospital with her child.
During the third visit, the baby went into liver failure caused by high iron levels. While under hospital observation, the child’s iron levels and liver function returned to normal.
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Local TV station WJAX reports that one of Taylor’s children, daughter Annie Schreiber, said at her sentencing hearing that her mother had spiked her milk with insulin when she was a baby.
“It hurts me that she did this to me,” Shreiber said.
Baker County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Tracie Benton, the lead detective on the case, told local station WJXT that the verdict was “the greatest feeling ever — justice is being served. She is being punished for torturing children.”
Benton added, “Someone has to speak up for the children, and I am just so happy that this has happened.”
Taylor faced a maximum of 45 years in prison, according to the state attorney’s office. Her parental rights for her 10 children have been revoked.
The prosecutor’s spokesman says Taylor will spend 12 years in state prison followed by 15 years of probation. Probationary conditions include not residing with a minor child, working or volunteering around minor children or being around a minor child without court-appointed approval.
It was not immediately clear if Taylor plans to appeal the verdict and sentencing.
