At a time when Liam was critically ill — underweight, medically fragile, and dependent on a nasogastric (NG) tube for nutrition — his father, Mark Stephens, presented a so-called “contract” to the court, the GAL, and Liam’s medical team.

Mark claimed Liam wrote this contract himself, asserting his rights as a 13-year-old under Washington law to make decisions about his care. But a closer look reveals a very different reality: this document was not Liam’s independent voice — it was Mark’s fear-based narrative, written through Liam’s hand.

The statements in this document were carefully constructed to undermine every element of treatment that was helping Liam heal:

• Antacids? Harmful long-term.
  Reality: These weren’t traditional antacids — they were calcium tablets prescribed to support Liam’s dangerously compromised bone density.
• X-rays and NG tube placement? Dangerous and cancer-causing.
  Reality: The X-rays were routine diagnostics to assess Liam’s delayed bone age, and the NG tube was a lifesaving measure because Liam couldn’t meet his caloric needs orally.
• Medications? Causing anxiety, nausea, reproductive harm, even diabetes and strokes.
  Reality: Liam tolerated his medications well, showed clear improvements under them, and according to his treating psychiatrist, Dr. Rao, expressed a desire to stay on them because they were helping him.
• Weight? Mark claimed Liam was “95th percentile and close to obese at 74 pounds.”
  Reality: Liam wasn’t even 74 pounds. He weighed 64 pounds at age 13, completely off the growth charts, medically classified as failure to thrive, growth-arrested, and with a bone age three years behind his chronological age.

Even more telling, in the final two statements supposedly written by Liam — where he claims not to want to be at Kartini Clinic — the word “undecided” appears.
Would a child determined to exit treatment insert “undecided” into such statements?
This undermines the entire claim that Liam authored this contract freely and independently.

And let’s remember what ARFID — Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder — actually is:
ARFID is an eating disorder where anxiety and distress around eating are often hidden or displaced, manifesting not in clear verbal expressions of fear, but in avoidant and restrictive behaviors themselves. Expecting a child in the depths of ARFID to accurately articulate a nuanced understanding of his condition, medical risks, and treatment plans, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the disorder itself — and a profound failure on Mark’s part to grasp what Liam was going through.

This contract was signed after nearly a year and a half of intensive, evidence-based care at Kartini Clinic. It came at a moment when Liam was regressing, after time spent in his father’s environment — an environment where, as Dr. Rao documented, Liam consistently became more anxious and restrictive around food following contact with Mark.

This “contract” was not advocacy.
It was manipulation, dressed up as empowerment.
A tool for Mark to undermine Liam’s medical team, delay life-saving care, and seed doubt where none should have existed.

The harm isn’t hypothetical: every day of delay, every ounce lost, every opportunity to build trust with providers eroded by this fear-driven rhetoric moved Liam further from health and healing.
It is a stark example of what happens when parental rights are twisted into parental control — at the expense of a child’s safety, health, and future.