His wife died of cancer. Who gets to decide whether her parents can visit with his child? - The Boston Globe (2025)

In front of mourners, his wife’s parents, Dr. Siavash Ghoreishi and Dr. Jila Khorsand, were holding Laila down and squirting prednisone into her throat.

Laila vomited and became hysterical. Naso scooped her up, furious.

Ghoreishi, who was also Laila’s pediatrician, said she had croup, a viral infection. “I’ve been in practice for 37 years, and I’ve treated over a hundred cases of croup,” he explained to the Globe. “And she is my granddaughter. I love her to death.”

Naso didn’t think she was sick, and he hadn’t consented to giving her prednisone. After the guests left, he realized he was uneasy.

Although the American Medical Association code of ethics says physicians shouldn’t treat themselves or close family, Ghoreishi and Khorsand had been treating their daughter and granddaughter for years.

Throughout her life, Shahrzad Naso, who was known as Sherry, had trusted her parents’ medical care. In the months before her death, they said that her growing weakness, numbness, and bowel trouble were related to Prozac withdrawal and lymphedema. They said she’d be fine by her 38th birthday in June.

In reality, Sherry Naso had a massive brain tumor and her body was riddled with cancer. She died on April 24, 2024.

Her parents said they were shocked by her death.

“Sherry was my only child. We were very close,” Khorsand said. “From a very young age, we have been very, very close friends, and not just mother and daughter. She is my true love, my reason for living.”

After his wife’s death, Naso, a narcotics detective, discovered dozens of prescriptions that Ghoreishi had written for his wife and his daughter. He read texts on his wife’s phone from Khorsand, a chief pathologist, that misdiagnosed her symptoms, advised her to take holistic supplements, and belittled their marriage.

Naso came to believe his wife may have lived if she hadn’t been under her parents’ care.

“I think their level of medical negligence and reckless behavior is the main reason she passed away when she did,” Naso said.

Naso decided he didn’t want his in-laws around Laila. He thought family court would reinforce his parental rights.

Instead, last fall, a judge granted their request for visits with his daughter — without a hearing required by state law.

“It’s horrific. And if this is happening to me, imagine all the other good people this is happening to and to the kids this system is failing,” Naso said.

This story is based on interviews with Naso, Ghoreishi, Khorsand, their lawyer, medical professionals, witnesses, medical records, public records, and photos, audio, and video recordings from the Naso home.

Sherry Ghoreishi was a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty, and Scott Naso was smitten from the moment they met.

He was a blue-collar man with a North Shore accent, working as a detective in Middletown, R.I. — a “cop’s cop,” said a friend from Saugus, Mass. — investigating cases for Rhode Island’s high-intensity drug-trafficking areas task force.

She grew up wealthy, the only child of Iranian-born physicians living in affluent East Greenwich, R.I., and, as a childhood friend recalled, she followed her parents’ wishes.

In late 2016, the two met through a friend while at O’Brien’s Pub in Newport. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. She told her parents Naso was her soul mate. She broke up with an Iranian American plastic surgeon whom her parents thought she’d marry and began dating Naso. Within a few months, they were living together.

The next year, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and endured grueling treatment. Naso stayed with her. When she recovered, he proposed.

They built their dream home in Portsmouth, R.I., married on their patio in 2020, and, with the help of an egg donor and surrogate paid for by Sherry Naso’s parents, welcomed their daughter, Laila, in 2021.

Chris H. Mirmirani said it was the first time he’d seen his childhood friend choose her own path.

“Marrying this guy was the best and only independent decision Sherry ever made,” Mirmirani said.

Then, in mid-2023, Scott Naso and their friends noticed something was wrong with her.

Sherry Naso became irritable, sometimes confused. On a trip in July with Naso, Laila, and their friends to her parents’ vacation home on Sebago Lake in Maine, she became violently ill.

From 200 miles away, Ghoreishi determined his daughter was sick from Ozempic. When her primary care physician prescribed it for her, Ghoreishi texted her: “He is so nice, whatever you tell him he does it.”

Ghoreishi insisted that he would treat his own daughter and told Naso to bring her back to Rhode Island.

“I suggested that Sherry go to the hospital and get blood work done, but Scott said she won’t go, she only takes medical advice from her parents,” their friend, Anthony Arone, recalled. “How do you fight that?

Sherry Naso didn’t fully recover.

Yet, at a routine appointment at Dana-Farber in December 2023, there were no reports of cancer, just moderate lymphedema in her right arm, according to her medical records. Scott Naso questioned whether she was having a mental-health crisis.

Her parents all but moved in with the Nasos, and the couple argued about their influence on their new marriage.

Khorsand says Scott Naso was “emotionally abusive.” “His style was to make a big violent outburst, and then slam the door and leave,” Khorsand told the Globe.

In January 2024, Scott Naso tried to talk things out. “I feel disrespected,” he said to Khorsand, in a conversation he recorded and shared with his therapist and the Globe. “I feel like you’ve undermined our marriage.”

Khorsand attacked him in reply. “You are a narcissist, and she has nobody but me,” she accused.

Sherry Naso’s health worsened each passing week. “My arm my foot my dizziness ... I can’t be left alone with Laila,” she texted her mother in March 2024, in messages from her phone that Scott Naso shared with the Globe.

He convinced her to see their psychiatric nurse practitioner, Nicole Helger, who thought Sherry Naso looked like she’d had a stroke. Helger urged her to see a neurologist, but she refused. She said her parents said she’d improve after tapering off Prozac.

That made no sense, Helger told the Globe, “but I could not get through to her, and I could not figure out why.”

Khorsand dismissed Helger’s concerns, texting her daughter: “There is nothing wrong with u and I would not see anyone until u are off the med completely!”

Sherry Naso replied: “Mom it’s easy to say relax but I can’t take care of my kid.”

Finally, Scott Naso and friends Mike and Mary Jane Morgan tricked Sherry Naso into seeing a neurologist — Mike’s father, Dr. Thomas Morgan.

The Morgans hadn’t seen Sherry Naso since the July 2023 vacation at Sebago Lake. When she arrived at their home in Saunderstown, R.I., on April 12, 2024, they were stunned.

She was gasping and disheveled. Her right side was limp. When Mary Jane hugged her and asked if she was OK, Sherry Naso cried, “Do I look OK?”

As she sat in his kitchen, Dr. Thomas Morgan observed how the right side of her face drooped, her right arm was weak, and she dragged her right leg. She had trouble thinking and kept nodding off.

He knew she previously had cancer. Now, he suspected that she had a tumor in the left side of her brain and dangerous swelling.

Sherry Naso asked him to call her parents. He told them he thought she had a brain tumor. He was sending her for an urgent MRI in the morning.

They asked if the MRI could wait. Dr. Morgan was emphatic.

“I was even nervous waiting overnight, because the brain is swollen, so when that thing herniates, you’re dead,” he told the Globe. “I told her parents that. I don’t think they believed me.”

Sherry Naso texted her mother that she was nervous. Khorsand told her not to worry.

“Out of respect we didn’t disagree with Dr. Morgan but hopefully we can have the test done tomorrow and find out for sure,” Khorsand texted, adding that it “is very unlikely for the type of ur cancer to go to the brain.”

Sherry Naso responded: “U said I’d be fine.”

The MRI showed she had swelling, lesions in her skull, and a 4.2-centimeter brain tumor. The breast cancer she thought she’d beaten had spread throughout her body.

They rushed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where a surgeon extracted the deep-rooted tumor.

She never regained consciousness.

“I watched Scott break down,” said Arone. “I watched him make the best decisions he could for his dying wife, trying to save her as much as he could.”

Her parents did not visit her at the hospital. Khorsand said her daughter had told them not to come — and she didn’t want to see her daughter in that condition.

Naso arranged his wife’s funeral. She was buried at a cemetery overlooking Narragansett Bay, near their home. Her parents didn’t go.

Instead, they lashed out at Naso.

Mary Jane Morgan said Laila was listening as Khorsand complained that Naso was abusive. Mirmirani said Khorsand told him that Naso was “a covert narcissist” who was “completely guilty of everything” and had caused stress that led to the cancer’s return.

Ghoreishi closed his practice the day his daughter died. Khorsand left her job at SouthCoast Hospitals Group. Their Rhode Island medical licenses expired that summer.

After the prednisone incident, Naso said he searched his home and found scores of medications that Ghoreishi prescribed for his wife and for Laila.

Naso requested his wife’s prescription records from CVS. They showed Ghoreishi had written 124 prescriptions for her since 2014.

Helger was shocked. “All of these symptoms that [Sherry Naso] was talking about were being masked,” she said. “You don’t just medicate symptoms for years, because there could be an issue.”

Laila’s records showed that Ghoreishi had prescribed 36 medications for her, including antibiotics, allergy medications, and inhalers.

Naso took Laila to a new pediatrician, who said Ghoreishi’s medical records were handwritten and incomplete, according to a letter shared with the Globe. Ghoreishi had prescribed antibiotics without office visits and without notes about their necessity, and didn’t record oxygen saturation levels, the letter said.

Laila hasn’t been sick under the new pediatrician’s care, Naso said.

Naso filed a complaint on Jan. 1 to the Rhode Island Department of Health. In it, he accused his in-laws of engaging in Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, manipulating his wife and daughter and creating “a cycle of chronic illness and dependency of their care.”

“The doctors prescribed and administered excessive amounts of unjustified prescription medications without appropriate medical documentation … [which] resulted in serious, catastrophic, and irreversible conclusions,” he wrote.

Eight years earlier, when Sherry Naso was diagnosed with breast cancer, her oncologist at Dana-Farber noted that the patient’s “very supportive” mother and father were involved in her medical care. Ghoreishi was prescribing Xanax to help his daughter sleep, the medical records said.

A lawyer representing Ghoreishi and Khorsand wouldn’t let them answer the Globe’s questions about the Department of Health complaint.

However, they defended Ghoreishi’s care of Laila.

“Is it medical neglect when he was for two and a half years taking care of this baby who was born 4 pounds with a plethora of symptoms, reflux, respiratory apnea, colic?” Khorsand said. “And now, she’s this beautiful, healthy child, because of his work.”

They had wanted their daughter to divorce Naso. Khorsand called him a “pathological liar” and said her daughter suffered under his “cruel behavior.”

Naso’s kindness and care during her daughter’s first cancer diagnosis took advantage of her “emotional vulnerability” to make her fall in love, Khorsand said.

“I mean, anybody that hears the story, they are shocked that an educated, beautiful woman gets in the web of lies and evilness of somebody like that,” she said.

Khorsand said, after her daughter, she was closest to Laila, not Naso, whom she called “absent.” She said their goal is unsupervised visits with Laila and “a civilized relationship” with Naso.

“I am not a cruel person. I am not against him. I just want him to realize our goal is not to destroy him, despite the fact that he wants to destroy us,” Khorsand said. “We have so much evidence that if we wanted to, we [could do] a lot more damage to him.”

Neither she nor Ghoreishi would elaborate. “We decided we want to be sympathetic,” Khorsand said. “We just want to get reasonable amount of time with this precious baby, who is the only connection to our daughter.”

They believe Naso is upset because they told him to remove his belongings from their $5 million vacation home in Maine last May.

Naso said it wasn’t about money; he had signed a prenup protecting Sherry’s wealth.

“I cared about my wife and care about Laila,” he said. “[I’m] giving my wife a voice she never had, getting her justice and protecting Laila from the same fate.”

Rhode Island law allows people whose children have died or divorced to petition the Family Court for visitation rights with their grandchildren.

The statute is straightforward. A judge holds a hearing on the petition and then “may” grant reasonable visitation. The judge must put in writing findings of fact that the visits are in the child’s best interests, and consider the impact of the visits on the relationship between the child and the parent.

It’s a high bar, because the 14th Amendment gives parents the right to oversee the care, custody, and control of their children. A US Supreme Court decision in 2000, Troxel v. Granville, reinforced that parental rights are fundamental and any interference by the state in parental decision-making must be carefully scrutinized.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has also upheld parents’ authority to determine their children’s best interests.

All petitions start in mediation, where they are often resolved. Those that aren’t go before a judge in Family Court.

After Ghoreishi and Khorsand petitioned for visitation, and Naso told the mediator that he wanted a hearing, the case went to Judge Debra DiSegna in Kent County in September 2024.

In court, DiSegna acknowledged “a lot of issues” with Laila’s case, according to a transcript. However, without holding a hearing, she temporarily ordered hourlong visits every other week, with a supervisor paid for by Sherry Naso’s parents. They wouldn’t be allowed to give the little girl medication.

Naso said he agreed on the advice of his lawyer at the time, who he said told him that otherwise DiSegna would “make it worse.”

But the “temporary” orders allow visits with no hearing, no findings of fact, and no decision that can be appealed.

This happened in another case before DiSegna, where her “temporary orders” went on for more than two years without a hearing — over the parent’s objections and in spite of the state law.

Naso still wanted a hearing. However, in October 2024, when Naso’s lawyer tried to stop the visits so Laila could see a therapist, DiSegna decided the visits would continue alongside therapy.

Laila began to spiral.

The visits supervisor, paid for by Ghoreishi and Khorsand, reported that they appeared loving with Laila, and she saw no safety concerns. But, she noted that Laila’s behavior was changing.

Laila was “very excited” to see them at first. Then, she resisted going, even calling them “bad people.” Naso said he told the supervisor that Laila was anxious on the weekends of visits, was clingy afterwards, and had meltdowns at day care.

Alarmed, Laila’s day care administrators and the therapists for her and Naso wrote to the court and spoke to the Globe.

“If granting the grandparents’ rights is going to create Scott and Laila such distress and disruption in their family system, there’s no real benefit and there’s plenty of evidence to say it could be remarkably detrimental to Laila’s development,” said Naso’s therapist Chris Baker.

Therapist Ryan Loiselle, whom Naso hired for Laila, said the visits should stop for the sake of her mental health. He told the Globe he is baffled the court isn’t considering Naso’s concerns.

Naso said he tries to hide his worries from Laila, but she is perceptive, Loiselle said. Her struggles at school and her reactions to the visits are Laila’s way of saying, “I don’t know how to tell my dad I don’t want to go,” Loiselle said.

“I’m in agreement with Scott,” Loiselle said. “He’s trying to be the voice for Laila because she’s 3.”

The letters weren’t entered into evidence. DiSegna didn’t read them.

In January, when Naso’s new lawyer, Jennifer Reynolds, filed a motion to suspend visits and hold an immediate hearing, DiSegna didn’t act.

However, DiSegna agreed Reynolds could ask Family Court Chief Judge Michael Forte to move the case to Newport County, where Naso lives and Ghoreishi and Khorsand own another home.

When Forte took up the case in March, he said DiSegna was recused. He said he’d decide April 29 where to move the case. Meanwhile, he ordered mediators to work with Naso, Ghoreishi and Khorsand.

“They’re going to be a family forever, whether they like it or not,” Forte said. “Or, we’re just going to be involved in micromanaging their lives for the next 15 years.”

Naso wanted someone to investigate his in-laws’ medical care.

He went to the Portsmouth police in July 2024; they said it was a Family Court matter. He went to the State Police and DEA last fall and was told it wasn’t a criminal matter.

Naso contacted the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families, which opened an investigation in February. The visits were paused.

Laila blossomed, according to her father, teachers, and therapist. She stopped having nightmares. She was cheerful, telling Naso: “Mommy is in our hearts.”

DCYF completed its investigation in late March. The results weren’t disclosed. The visitation order was still valid, so in early April, the supervisor told Naso she wanted to resume the visits.

Naso read the email in the day care’s parking lot, while Laila played on her iPad. He hoped she didn’t see him crying.

“Imagine reliving this every single day, and you have to put on a brave face for your child, all while I’m torn apart inside, trying to get through without a catastrophic breakdown,” Naso said. “But if I don’t, they win. And then I’m going to lose Laila.”

Amanda Milkovits can be reached at amanda.milkovits@globe.com. Follow her @AmandaMilkovits.