A Lincoln mother accused of not taking 4-year-old son to cancer treatment speaks out

“This is so, so sad.”

Abak Rehan’s life has been turned upside down in the last month. 

She says she and the boy’s father are being treated unfairly and now, their son has been taken away and is in state care. She was charged with felony child abuse accused of not taking her 4–year–old son to chemotherapy treatments.

Court documents detail interviews with doctors who said the boy would die within a year without receiving the treatments.

Rehan says she took him at first, but didn’t like the side effects the treatments had.

She took him to Tennessee to get a second opinion and says she told the doctors but they kept making appointments.

“Still insisted I said I wanted to go and find a second opinion,” adds Rehan. “They did not want me to do that and I think that’s why they reacted so fast.”

While there, she says she was arrested at gunpoint – her son taken back to Nebraska while she sat in jail.

Once extradited back, she was charged in Lancaster County Court.

“I do not want treatment for my child?” said Rehan. “That’s a lie because I was happy that the treatment was working cause the tumors shrunk and it went away. So, why would I refuse my child treatment? Because I’m trying to help my child the best way possible what ever we have to do get him better that’s what we want to do.”

According to the documents, doctors said there is a 60 percent chance the boy could be cured with the treatment – which was described as “standard” and “used nationwide.”

Prosecutors say Rehan put her son’s life in jeopardy but she and the boy’s father believe there’s a different way to help him and that they’re being treated unfairly.

“We are a family in pain and our human rights have been violated this is beyond Nebraska this should be international because for you to take a child from a parent that has never wronged the child this is wrong,” said Mohamed Kamara, the father.

No charges have been filed against the boy’s father. DHHS says failure to provide medical treatment to a child is considered a form of neglect. We will continue to follow this story.