Believe in Magic - Episode 6: One Direction

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Why did Megan and her mother set up Believe in Magic? Jamie investigates their link to pop megastars One Direction. He discovers crucial evidence is about to be published.

Please help trend hashtag Harry follow Meg for my very poorly daughter at Meg Styles, who has a brain tumour, kiss kiss. At Harry Styles, please follow at Meg Styles, your mum does, Meg is fee poorly at the moment and it would make a feel better. Thanks from her mum, kiss kiss. At Louis Thomson, hey at Meg Styles has had 23 operations in two years. Could you follow please and really make her weekend kiss? At Harry Styles, Harry, I know your gorgeous and my daughter at Meg Styles is crazy about you. Could you please please please send her a tweet? Kiss kiss.

Please please please send her a tweet. In the first ten months of the starting her Twitter account, Jean tweets one direction direction 539 times. People fake illness for lots of reasons. Some people do it for predominantly financial gain, they're called malinguars. Others, the Munchows and sufferers like Cindy who we heard in episode 3, do it because they enjoyed the attention, admiration and sympathy that comes with being ill. For Meg and Jean, we're still trying to work out exactly why they did it. I wonder if you remember this.

What's your name? No. No, what? Oh. Hi, What's your name? No. No, no, what? Hi. Hi, what's your name? My name's Iig. Iig. Nice to meet you. What's your name?

I'm Harry Styles. OK. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE OK, Harry, how old are you? I'm 16. I'm Jamie Bartlett. This is Believe in Magic. Episode 6, One Direction. It's summer 2010, a year before Megan Jean launched Believe in Magic.

Five teenagers called Nile Zane, Harry, Lea and Louis are auditioning for season 7 of the X-Factor. What are you going to say? I'll do, isn't it, she'll love it by Steve, we wonder. Okay, good luck. Simon Cowell decides these five teenagers should compete as a band. And although they only come third that year, within a few months, one direction have become a global sensation. As one D take over the world, Megan is posting in forums and writing newsletters about

her idiopathic intra-cranial hypertension that non-life threatening but very painful illness caused by a build-up of brain fluid around the skull. As a reminder, I-I-H is not a brain tumour. When she's not raising money for the charity I-IUK, Megan's spending her time watching One Direction. Her friend Natalie Garrett remembers the effect on Meg. She was absolutely obsessed with One Direction, completely in love with Harry Styles. I think she changed her Twitter to Meg Styles or something like that. She wouldn't stop talking about them.

Megan is almost the same age as Harry Styles. In 2010, she's just 15. And she is besotted. She creates two Twitter accounts. At Meg Underschool Styles and at Meg Underschool Styles with an extra S. To fans like Megan, one direction and more than just a band. A documentary program that follows fans around finds directioners waiting outside hotels all night, even memorising band members' weights. It's a good drug addiction. I've met them 64 times. Direction is talk of obsession, of loyalty to the 1D lifestyle.

They love that the band is good looking and talented, but also normal, likable and fun. Well, if you say much please, please, please, please, I'm going to die if you don't follow me. Please follow me, I love you. Millions believe they're truly in love, with Harry Styles, Zane Malik, Louis, Nile and the other one. And one day, in March 2011, all Megan's dreams come true when she's invited, along with several other very unwell children, to meet one direction and some other stars of the X-Factor after a show at the O2 Arena in London. It's a whirlwind day. She sings along to their hits, then

Metarian co-backstage. I think Megan Jean had long been fascinated with illness and the attention that it brings. But maybe it's now sitting backstage with A-listers that the pair realize that illness doesn't just get the retention, it's also a way for them to go places and do things that would otherwise be impossible. The more ill you are, the greater the sympathy, the bigger the opportunities. Here's a confession.

When I was a teenager, I was convinced that Kate Mossenai would get married one day. It wasn't just a fantasy. I felt like we were destined to be together. And I thought that if I could just talk to her somehow, then she'd realize it too. The only problem was that in the mid-90s, there wasn't really a way for me to contact Kate Moss directly. Every now and again, there'd be a picture of her on a super yacht, and it wasn't easy for me to get to her

super yacht from North Kent on my paper boys' wages. It's okay, and I never did get married in the end. And if you're listening, Kate, sorry, but you've missed your chance. But believe in magic arrives at a very special moment in time. In the early 2010s, the internet is starting to make celebrity more accessible. The barrier between the famous and the not famous is being pulled down. Thanks to social media, celebrities can be ordinary people, and ordinary people can be celebrities.

No one seems to personify this like one direction. They are within reach. They turn up in 2010, just as Twitter is taking off. And the band often tweet videos and updates of their daily lives, sometimes even replying to fans' tweets. Directioners share tips and advice about how to get Harry Styles to retweet or follow you.

The way to get noticed in the age of social media, the way to stand out from the sea of people posting and tweeting and sharing is to become the most extreme version of yourself possible, to be the loudest or the most outrageous. Maybe for Megane Jean, the same thing was happening with illness. Idiopathic intracranial hypertension or an enlarged pituitary gland wasn't enough to get picked out from the crowd. It had to be something more serious.

Because a few weeks after meeting one direction, Jean mentions on Twitter for the first time that Meghan has a brain tumour. 20th of April 2011, tweet by Jean. At Evie Burnett, Evie You are FAB, wish you could follow my 16-year-old daughter at Meg Styles, who has a brain tumour, was a singer before she was ill, kiss. Evie Burnett by the way, was a vocal coach on the X-Factor. And in the following weeks, even before believing magic exists, Megan Jean go on a kind of digital campaign, sometimes tweeting hundreds of times a day, especially at celebrities, Philip Scofield, Danny Monogue, Peer's Morgan,

asking them for a re-tweet or a follow-back. And above all, one direction. And why should they listen? Why should they follow her? Because Megan is so ill. She has a brain tumor. And when Megan Jean decided to create believe in magic in the summer of 2011,

the top priority is to get one direction to post about it. At Harry Styles, my daughter is very poorly and had 23 operations. She started a charity at Believe in Magic to spread magic. Please, retweet and follow, kiss kiss. Twitter has special automated systems to block spam, which spot identical messages. To get around them, Jean posts a slight variant of that message moving a full stop or adding a kiss at 5.57pm, 7.11pm, 7.15pm, 7.16pm, twice, 7.17pm, twice, and 850pm.

As far as Meg's sister Kate is concerned, Meg and Jean don't simply want one direction to promote their charity. One direction could even be the reason they set the charity up in the first place. I believe that's why the charity came about and why the charity was started to get the attention of one direction. And then why do you say that?

Because I think that's what happened. I would say 90-months it's all that's why. Because of the order of events or because you saw what's going on. Yeah, and I saw what, and I knew what they're like, and I obviously, things that they were saying, what they were doing. So, she was desperately trying to get the retention. And I can see how they've done it. And it's a case of, they've started this charity

because that is one way to get into the celebrities and to get one directions attention. A few weeks later, Megan Jean's prayers are answered. 6 August 2011, tweet by Harry Styles. Everyone should follow and support at Believe in Magic. It's a great cause. 700 new followers in 15 minutes. Within days, they have thousands. Harry follows Meg. Louis Tomlinson also follows. And Meg has become one of the lucky few people around the world followed by one direction. She has a direct line to celebrity. If this was the plan, it worked better than Meg and Jean could ever have hoped. Within months of Meg and Jean talking about a brain tumor on Twitter, one direction of wearing believe in magic wristbands on stage, Harry Styles mum climbs Mount Kilimanjaro

to raise money for the charity. The band donate merch that Megan Jean then raffle off for sell on eBay. And thanks to one direction support, believe in magic becomes a household name in the child cancer community almost overnight. It might seem far fetched, almost silly. But faking illness to access the magical world of celebrity isn't as strange as it seems. For 30 years, our Munchhausen expert Mark Feldman has studied people who pretend to be ill. This used to take place in the doctor's consultation room or hospital. But now, deception in the hospital is often combined with posting and tweeting, because you'll often get just as much sympathy and attention in the virtual world as the real one.

Well back in 2000, I went to a term called Munchhausen by Internet, and that was based on the fact that I was becoming aware that some of the illness deceptions were taking place entirely online or partially online and partially in real life. And since then, I've heard about hundreds of those cases. And we see a permutation now where going online and mobilizing celebrities in particular, and they tend to be sports heroes, but they can be musicians, provides an entree into a world that these people never otherwise would have encountered.

One of the first cases I heard about was a person miss representing their health status in a special interest group devoted to the singer Bruce Springstein. And there was always the hope among all the members that Bruce himself would log on and encourage their involvement and support and thank them and become friends with them and they'd be on a first name basis. There are many, many, many groups like that. An illness can be the entree that allows someone to emerge out of the pack of people who are

infatuated with this celebrity and especially dire illness or changing illnesses or life-threatening illnesses. The best lies contain a grain of truth. After all the people we've spoken to and all the documents we've analysed, I've realised just how imprecise and inexact medical science really is. And there are still things we don't know. But here's my working theory of what happened and why. The doctors really were treating Meghan for idiopathic intra cranial hypertension right up to her death and some other manageable conditions too.

Even though these illnesses can be serious, they weren't at least not initially life-threatening. And it's awful to say they're not glamorous, they don't allow you to emerge from the pack. I think that when Megan is diagnosed with a relatively mild and fairly common in large pituitary gland in 2010, Megan Jean take that grain of truth and turn it into a life-threatening brain tumour. That compelling story, the girl with a brain tumor running a charity, takes off. Believe in magic grows, and Megan Jean became the fairy godmother's, celebrities in their own right. The letter Kate saw in 2013 from Boston Children's Hospital said Meg did not have

evidence for a pituitary gland abnormality, and it's not mentioned in the coroner's inquest. Perhaps the enlarged Pertuitry Gland had gone back to normal as it can do with teenagers. But by then, it's too late. The lie is too established. They're in too deep. We're in too deep. Now we have another inspirational young lady in the studio with us. She is these little bands for her charity. What's your year being like? It's been, it's been a great of a year really. Believe in magic has grown so much and more than really we have a dream to cook.

You have the boys, they're wearing your wristbands in 40 countries, so now you're wristband by not only companies with kill for that opportunity. I mean, that's actually ridiculous. How do you persuade these people to get involved? I think people really like that because I'm 17 and because I've been pulling myself, it means they kind of get it more than if it's just... I don't really know, I think they get the story behind it. than if it's just, I don't really know, I think they get the story behind it.

Meghan's right. The story behind it is Meghan's brain tumour, her 20-plus operations, her life-threatening condition. Without that story, there probably isn't a belief in magic. The celebrity connections and newfound fame will disappear if Meghan isn't seriously ill. Dark as this story is, I think they both loved helping children, and illness allowed Meghan Jean to do that too. Natalie Garrett from the I.I.H. forum used to see Meghan all the time, but by 2013, as believe in magic grew, they saw less and less of each other. She'd helped Meghan get an appointment at one of the UK's top neurosurgeons, but Meghan Jean hadn't turned up. Natalie was worried. She tried to talk to Meghan about this

at the 2013 Believe in Magic Christmas party at the Tower of London. Meghan was running around as normal and I said, she was out in the back and I went and sat on the stairs and said, Meg, what's going on? I said, you keep telling people, you're really, really poorly and you're doing all of this. Why are you risking yourself? If you're this sick, why are you doing it?

And Jean walked in and Meg said, oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. And she sort of goes to brush you off sort of thing. I said, come on, tell me what's going on. And Jean said, oh Natalie, all you need to know is the sick of megg is the more attention we get, the more money we make. And then all of her little buddies came in, going over her and she stopped talking to me. Then I said to the people that we were there with, I said we're going there.

I just felt helpless, felt powerless to do anything. And I talked about it with my ex-husband, I talked about it a lot and said, what do you think we could do? And he said nothing, just walk away. So I did. For the tablet on them was the last time you saw her? Yeah. And Jean, this is the last time I spoke to Jean. There's tablet on them. Never spoke to Jean again. The brain tumour allowed them to set up a real charity with real donors,

giving hundreds of thousands of pounds of real money. But running a charity is a serious legal commitment. Donations must be spent in line with the charity's objectives and they're a strict accounting and reporting rules. Maybe believe in magic grew too fast. Maybe the fame and celebrity went to Megane's heads and the boundary between the charity money and their own became blurred.

Either way, in 2020, the charity commission concluded its investigation into Believing Magic. They found accounts were filed late, or not at all. They weren't independently examined. Over 100,000 pounds was unaccounted for. Charity money had been transferred into Jean's personal bank account. The Charity Commission concluded

that all this amounted to misconduct and or mismanagement. Jean agreed not to be a trustee or in a senior management position in any charity for five years. The charity was dissolved, and on the 17th of August, 2020, believe in magic was removed from the official register. Munchausen Syndrome is about deceit, but it seems that for mech and gene there were two

types of lies. There was the public lie, the inspirational young woman with a life-threatening brain tumor who ran a large charity and who needed to raise money for her own treatment. The lie which helped her rub shoulders with one direction and become a celebrity. But from what we've learned, there was the private lie too. It predated belief in magic. It happened inside the consultation rooms, where doctors were told she needed more thing

because of acute pain, had serious infections or couldn't lie down because of intra cranial hypertension, despite tests showing nothing. had serious infections or couldn't lie down because of intra cranial hypertension despite tests showing nothing. If the private lies were spotted sooner, maybe the public lie would never have been possible. For months, the producer Ruth and I tried to speak to doctors involved in the case, hoping they could tell us why it was so hard to intervene. We contacted everyone who spoke at the coroner's inquest and messaged American doctors we know they visited.

We kept hitting the same roadblock, patient doctor confidentiality, because doctors have a legal duty to keep our medical history private, even after we die. But finally, we found someone who could help us. It was almost by accident. Daniel Glazer is a retired consultant, child and adolescent psychiatrist, formerly at Great Orman Street Children's Hospital.

She specialises in child abuse and neglect and has a special interest in fabricated and induced illness previously known as Munchhausen Syndrome by proxy. That's where apparent or care giver exaggerates or invents their children's symptoms to doctors, either mistakenly or deliberately. Right, well I'm very old. I trained initially as a developmental pediatrician and then went into child psychiatry and then I developed thinking on emotional abuse and then eventually I veered into fabricated and induced illness. We got in touch with Dr Glazer because she helped write the UK guidelines for doctors on how to spot fabricated or induced illness. It turns out she already knows about the case of

Megan Jean, although she never met them in person. She won't really say how much she knows. although she never met them in person, she won't really say how much she knows. I am moderately familiar with the case. I only heard about it, but a colleague of mine knew more about it and the colleague then told me and I became more familiar with the facts a little bit from the inside.

We have this slightly strange, backward and forward. Ruth and I are trying to work out what she knows. Dr Glazer almost wants to tell us something, but can't. I don't know that all the doctors who may well have individually noted alerting signs, I don't know that they got together. That's as far as I can say on that case. I don't know that they did. I don't know. Ruth remembers that one of the doctors in the coroner's inquest had tried to get everyone involved in Meghan's care together. Because she was seeing so many different medical professionals,

they were worried that they never had the full picture. So, what I've been told is that there were some concern amongst some doctors, and there was a decision that they were going to try and see her more as a group, but then after that they never went back to those doctors. Yeah, yeah. All of the alerting signs were on the face of it visible. Well, that's why I said to a yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, from what I know of the case. Dr Glazer explains that from what she knows, the case of Megan Jean is very complicated. When I ask if medical professionals failed Megan, she says it's hard to blame one person. Doctors aren't always brilliant at admitting they're confused by a case, and they don't

want to miss anything, especially if the young person themselves is reporting certain symptoms. Could I ask, um, but are you able to say whether you think this case is FIIR? FIIR stands for Fabricated or Induced Illness, the new term for Munchhausen Syndrome by proxy. Let me put it that it's lowest and say it certainly has elements, which suggests that it could be FII. And in a way, it's up to either yourselves or your listeners to try to put two and two

together and say, yes, this was by you telling them what FII is and telling them what they were the case and then it's up to people to make their own minds up. And then she says something strange, almost throw away. I don't know what happened with the Kingston Review. And I don't know, you may not be too good because you know the identity. The Kingston Review. We've not heard about the Kingston Review until now.

But we do know that Megan Jean lived in the London borough of Kingston. After the interview, Ruth does a bit of digging, and works out this probably refers to something called a safe guarding adult's review. These are rare, secretive investigations into cases where people have been seriously let down by the authorities? They usually involve doctors, social workers, even the police. There are only a handful of years, if that. When they're published, the names of the people involved are normally changed. Only those who know the background, people like me and Ruth will realise who it's about.

Ruth and I have spent months trying to put this puzzle together, but there are several pieces still missing. We know at one point there was a police investigation, but it was closed due to lack of evidence. Could this Kingston review reopen the case? Maybe this document can finally resolve the story.ra of Kingston upon terms. Right, right, right, right, right. Okay, it's important. This is important. I had been told that there was something called a safeguarding adults review into what

happened with Megan and that would have been done after her death. So I put in a request to Kingston for that review. And they've just said to me, due to the fact that the safeguarding adults review has not been completed, we are unable to share any further information at this time, the review is anticipated to be signed off in April 2022. They're still working on it. Oh my God. is anticipated to be signed off in April 2022. They're still working on it. Oh my God. So basically, this is incredibly important. And when these things come out, they're news. Yeah, but it may be that there'll be a huge news story about this, but no one will know who this is about, but we will.

And we will. And we will... Yeah, I know exactly. What are we supposed to do with that? We suddenly realize we're in the middle of an emerging case. Because right now, it turns out we're not the only people trying to get to the bottom of this story. Far from it. When this report is published, everything could change. Believe in Magic is a BBC studio's podcast. It's presented by me, Jamie Bartlett. The series producer is Ruth Meier.

Music by Jeremy Wormsley, sound designed by Peregrine Andrews, the executive producer is Inis Bowen. Archive in this episode is from free mantle Simco Limited, Mentor Media and BBC Archive. you