How do you get the attention of those in charge of your life? How do you get the attention of those who have stolen your child? You do that by sharing your story and making it public. We have done that, and will continue to share our story! Our cause is growing, and the more people who read and see that our government isn't doing things quite right, the faster it will get fixed. There are thousands of children across the country who are wrongly taken from their homes. All a CPS worker needs to do is say they believe there is child abuse and your kids are gone. The facts don't need to exist, merely the opinion of a single social worker. This is wrong. There our so many who truly do need help, yet they seem to be missed. Instead there are innocent families being torn apart to try and compensate for their mistakes. This isn't justice! You can't fix your errors by replacing the lost ones with innocent ones. My family is innocent, and we have come to know so many others who are also innocent. Please, if you or any person you know has had their family torn apart by wrongful allegations of child abuse by CPS join our cause and spread the word. We need to save our families and our nation!
There was one highly unusual thing about the newspaper report yesterday on a Welsh couple, David and Julie Nevin, whose young son was removed by social workers for nine months, with a view to possible adoption. Two paediatricians had suggested that a small bruise on the boy’s forehead was caused by parental abuse – but, in this very exceptional instance, a judge found the doctors’ evidence unconvincing and ordered the boy to be returned to his parents. Hundreds of similar cases each year remain unreported because the evidence of “experts” is almost invariably accepted by the courts.
Devastating new light was recently shed on the “expert” evidence on which our courts so crucially rely by Professor Jane Ireland’s report analysing 126 psychological reports used in family cases. A fifth of their authors, the study found, had no proper qualifications; 90 per cent were not in practice but earned their living from producing reports for social workers, and two thirds of the results were “poor” or “very poor” in quality.
The publication of this damning report, which had been delayed for six months, coincided with the reporting to the General Medical Council of another psychological “expert”, Dr George Hibbert, accused of writing hundreds of reports framed to suit the views of social workers. He had allegedly earned £6,000 a week for each family he was asked to “assess”.
A charge commonly heard against these psychiatric and medical “experts”, endorsed by countless informed observers, is that too many of them are just “hired guns”, regularly employed by social workers to come up with the evidence they need to justify removing children from their parents. Naturally, those in charge of the system are anxious to deny such claims. In 2009, Lord Justice Wall, now our senior family judge, went out of his way, in one well-publicised case (W (Children) EWCA Civ59), to claim that to regard experts as “hired guns” was “a misconception”: their impartiality was a glory of our family justice system. Yet that very case, involving the Webster family, has become a byword for the fallibility of “experts”.
Three children were taken from their parents after metaphyseal bone fractures in one of them had been diagnosed as evidence of parental abuse. When the parents refused to admit to this, a psychiatric “expert” testified that this showed they must be guilty of both physical and psychological abuse. The children were sent separately for adoption.
When the wife again became pregnant, the parents escaped to Ireland to avoid the baby being taken. But they also began to track down independent experts who might take a more informed view than that accepted by the court. Eventually no fewer than five experts, including one of the most respected paediatricians in the land, testified that the bone fractures came from natural causes. This led to the parents being allowed to keep their fourth child. But Wall ruled that, though the case was clearly distressing, it was too late to return the adopted children.
In another published judgment in 2010 (EWHC B12), Mr Justice Bellamy summarised a case that cost taxpayers more than £1 million, involving three children removed from their parents by Coventry council. Social services, which had been intervening in the family’s life for 10 years, found a psychiatrist who reported, on the basis of medical records, that the parents had been fabricating various medical conditions. Bellamy, in his judgment, excoriated this 235-page report, for which the “expert” was paid £35,000, and ordered that the children be returned to their parents.
Last year, however, Bellamy ordered the publishing of another judgment (EWHC 2011 B8), in a case I had several times reported, which arguably showed that he too was susceptible to experts whose one-sided evidence had not been questioned. The judgment (continaining several remarks directed at me, some of which he later had to retract) ordered the removal of a baby from its devoted mother, accusing her of having harmed her child, on evidence remarkably similar to that which proved so flawed in the Webster case.
I now have files full of similar examples of families torn apart on the basis of “expert” evidence. Only very occasionally do these get publicity, via a higher court. Last year, for instance, the Court of Appeal overturned a ruling by Judge Orrell that three children should be removed from their parents. It had been arrived at after a 15-minute hearing where a medical expert testified that bruising on one child could possibly have been caused by “pinching”. The parents had not been allowed to challenge this evidence. Mr Justice Thorpe memorably observed: “I am completely aghast at this case. There is nothing more serious than a removal hearing, because the parents are so prejudiced in proceedings thereafter. Once you lose a child it is very difficult to get a child back.”
The removal of children into care by what the BBC calls our “brave” social workers is now at a record level of some 900 a month. In a Commons debate last week, Jonathan Djanogly, a junior Justice minister, stated in answer to John Hemming MP that some 90 per cent of these family care proceedings rely on the evidence of expert witnesses, the average case being based on four such reports. These make for their authors a remarkaby good living. (A senior paediatrician, a doctor tells me, can receive £100,000 for writing one.)
Recent evidence seems to confirm there is much more here which those professionals whom Mr Djangogly described as “stakeholders” would not wish to see exposed to public view.
CASA Volunteers - But it gets even worse. Many juvenile courts across the country are now handing off official fact finding and decision making responsibilities in these cases to CASA volunteers, people who are only required to have 30 hours training. And the juvenile courts are usually assigning these volunteers to the most egregious and complex cases of child abuse.
The public has been... thoroughly wooed to the feel good idea of having CASA volunteers to 'protect the interests of the child' in these cases. Indeed, there is great benefit for the child to be assigned a special person to talk to and even to advocate for the child through this process.
The whole CASA program would be just fine if it ended there. But juvenile courts routinely swear these volunteers in as official court fact finders (investigators), as representatives of the child's stated interests, as representatives of the child's best interests, and, as formulators of recommendations to the court as to the best disposition of the child. A recent national study, the Packard Foundation funded Caliber Study, finds that juvenile court judges adopt ALL the recommendations of the CASA volunteers in over 60% of cases.
This is a complete mockery and travesty of any and all notions of justice, and is particularly contemptful of mother's and children's rights. For so many reasons. But just for one, imagine if your surgeon sought out and took the recommendation of whether to amputate your leg from a volunteer with 30 hours training. You would be outraged! And you would never deal with this surgeon again. Yet this is exactly what juvenile court judges across the country are doing on the question of whether or not to remove the child from the mother, in the most complex and egregious of cases. They are turning over their fact finding, evaluation, and decision making responsibilities by swearing in persons with 30 hours training to act in any or all these official capacities.
The courts say they are doing this because they want to be sure to hear the children's voices. But you only have to think for a moment to realize what the courts are really doing is avoiding the costs of a professional investigator, expert, or professional representation that is minimally needed to guarantee even minimal judicial standards for children.
And these courts have the nerve to accuse the mothers of failure to protect!
The point is that CASA can be a great program. But just like all other programs, each individual volunteer is different. When a judge allows a single volunteer to have such a large impact on a case they are essentially going against the due process clause. Yes, please help our children. But please have an open mind and don't let the fear of the idea of "child abuse" cloud reality. "For the safety of the child" is a powerful phrase, but it isn't always an accurate or true statement, and often leads to mistakes. Again, keep an open mind and consider that families as a whole and all the other facts that are in play.
Missouri House Wants to Increase Prison Time for Shaken Baby Cases
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By: KOLR10 News
Updated: March 8, 2012
(Jefferson City, MO)--Lawmakers in the Missouri House are looking at ways to stiffen penalties for those who hurt or kill a baby by shaking them.
The Associated Press reports the House has endorsed a measure that would expand Missouri's child abuse law.
The bill's sponsor says the current law makes it hard to prosecute people when a child dies from Shaken Baby Syndrome.
The bill would make it a crime to "recklessly cause head injuries" to any child.
Currently, abusers face up to seven years in prison.
This measure would raise prison time up to fifteen years, if the child is younger than two years old.
"Child abuse is despicable, and I have little sympathy for those who inflict it, especially in cases resulting in the death of the infant. However, the diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome (aka Abusive Head Trauma) has been increasingly under fire of the past several years, with many, many doctors now coming forward to state their concerns about how the diagnosis is being misused to convict the innocent. I'm not sure which is more despicable: sending an innocent, grieving parent to prison when their infant dies of natural causes, or the child abuse itself. In fact, even the man who created the diagnosis, A. Norman Guthkelch, is now "horrified" by the way his diagnosis has been perverted and over-diagnosed to the point that perhaps hundreds of innocent people are sent to prison every year. http://www.npr.org/2011/06/29/137471992/rethinking-shaken-baby-syndrome Furthermore, Dr. Waney Squier, one of the top infant neuropathologists in the world has stated that she feels that perhaps HALF OR MORE of Shaken Baby http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1382290/At-half-parents-tried-shaken-baby-syndrome-wrongly-convicted-expert-warns.html The UK and Canada have both begun to recognize the horrible mistakes that this faulty diagnosis have caused, but the United States is lagging far behind. And now we want to increase the penalty for crimes that may not even be real? This is madness. Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer recently wrote a paper on the problems regarding the prosecution of Shaken Baby Syndrome from a legal standpoint. In her opinion as well, some day we are going to have to come to terms with an injustice that we have never before faced in our legal system, and it will be monumental, as this diagnosis is eventually proven to be junk science. http://lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/87/1/dtuerkheimer.pdf
"A differential diagnosis (sometimes abbreviated DDx, ddx, DD, D/Dx, or ΔΔ) is a systematic diagnostic method used to identify the presence of an entity where multiple alternatives are possible (and the process may be termed differential diagnostic procedure), and may also refer to any of the included candidate alternatives (which may also be termed candidate condition). This method is essentially a process of elimination, or at least, rendering of the probabilities of candidate conditions to negligible levels. In this sense, probabilities are, in fact, imaginative parameters in the mind or hardware of the diagnostician or system, while in reality the target (such as a patient) either has a condition or not with an actual probability of either 0 or 100%."
In this process you examine what symptoms are present and what symptoms aren't. But it is often seen in child abuse cases that these steps are ignored. Often it is simply assumed that child abuse is the answer, when there truly is an underlying condition. In our case there were so many factors missing for them to diagnose abuse. In child abuse you look for bruising, bleeding, burns, cuts, bleeding on the brain, retinal hemorrhaging, subdural hematoma, damage to the internal organs, and damage to bones. When you are looking at a child that has a broken bone, but no bruising, bleeding, burns, cuts, bleeding on the brain, retinal hemorrhaging, subdural hematoma, damage to the internal organs, and even no damage to the tissue surrounding the fracture then according to the process of differential diagnosis, the probability of child abuse being present is greatly reduced, and the likelihood of a metabolic bone issue is greatly increased. If a doctor chooses to ignore these factors then they are essentially violating the Hippocratic oath. What do you think? Shouldn't doctors actually follow a scientific process to come to their solutions rather then making an assumption that can utterly destroy a family? Shouldn't it be more important to be sure of a diagnosis before you testify to it in court? Shouldn't a doctor who has clearly not followed the differential diagnosis process have to answer for his erroneous ways?
After nearly nine years in prison, Ernie Lopez has returned home to Amarillo, Texas, where a throng of family members and supporters celebrated his release.
Hugging his daughter Nikki and brother Eddie late last week, Lopez seemed overwhelmed and relieved.
But in the years since Lopez was sentenced to 60 years behind bars, new evidence has surfaced suggesting Vas died of natural causes – a severe blood disorder called Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, which can cause bleeding throughout the body. Lopez’s appellate lawyers, led by Seattle attorney Heather Kirkwood, have amassed a team of medical specialists who have challenged the notion that Lopez sexually assaulted the child and fatally injured her brain.
Lopez, 41, has always maintained his innocence.
In January, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Lopez’s conviction, saying that his original legal team had provided him with ineffective assistance during his trial by “failing to call medical experts” to dispute the prosecution’s theory that Lopez had attacked the baby. The court – the highest criminal court in Texas – didn’t absolve Lopez, but said there was a “reasonable probability” that he would have been acquitted had his attorneys countered the medical evidence arrayed against him.
For more on this story, watch our film The Child Cases. Also take a look at reporting from our partners at ProPublica and NPR, including this slideshow of Ernie Lopez’s first hours of freedom.
Lopez’s story reflects a broader controversy. Increasing numbers of doctors and other experts are questioning the reliability of the science used to prosecute cases of fatal child abuse and sexual assault. In Canada and the U.S. at least 23 people who were wrongly accused of killing children based on flawed or biased work by forensic pathologists have been cleared over the last 15 years.
The Texas court’s ruling set the stage for Lopez to be released Friday on a $10,000 bond. His release order bars him from initiating contact with children, though he is allowed to spend time with his three children. It also requires him to wear an electronic monitoring anklet and to abide by a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.
At his parents’ home on the outskirts of Amarillo, Lopez celebrated the events and holidays he missed during his long confinement. The family even put up a Christmas tree.
While Lopez was overjoyed to be reunited with his family and friends, Potter County District Attorney Randall Sims has signaled his intent to retry Lopez on sexual assault charges.
Sims recently declined to talk about the details of the case with ProPublica, FRONTLINE and NPR, but throughout the appeals process, prosecutors have maintained that Lopez assaulted Vas, and have enlisted an array of medical professionals to support that contention.
Lopez’s lawyers said they expect their client to face trial again this fall. Since his release, Lopez has reveled in his freedom and grappled with the reality that it may be only temporary.
Vitamin D deficiency is a real problem that is causing a comeback of rickets in the United States and other developed countries. Lack of sunshine in the Pacific Northwest and the prevalence of sunscreen use has increased the number of cases. Throw in a dose of breastfeeding and you have a vast number of babies that are Vitamin D deficient.
Rickets is a bone disease that, apparently, Children’s Services and the court system have a tough time understanding.
Taking a child from a loving family without first understanding the problem is a terrible thing. This should not be tolerated. Our state, our county and our city should research and protect both babies and families before terrible mistakes are made.
Jim Dossett
McMinnville
Editor’s Note: Mr. Dossett has given the News-Register permission to reveal he is referring to his own grandson in this letter and that Department of Human Services has taken custody of the child because of suspected child abuse. As reported by both Portland television station KATU and the Linfield Review, the child’s parents have stated repeatedly that their son has not been abused but instead suffers from neonatal rickets. The parents have thus far been unable to regain custody. A spokesperson for DHS has confirmed that Mr. Dossett’s grandchild is in foster care but would not comment further on the case.
Memo to Pediatricians: Screen All Kids for Vitamin D Deficiency, Test Those at High Risk
MEDIA CONTACT: Ekaterina Pesheva
EMAIL: epeshev1@jhmi.edu
PHONE: (410) 502-9433
February 22, 2012
As study after study shows the fundamental role vitamin D plays in disease and health, vitamin D deficiency — which often develops insidiously in childhood — should be on every parent’s and pediatrician’s radar, say physicians from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
“Vitamin D deficiency can be a problem year round, but because sun exposure is critical for vitamin D synthesis and production, the winter months further exacerbate what is a perennial problem,” says Johns Hopkins Children’s Center endocrinologist Dominique Long, M.D.
Levels at or below 20 nanograms per milliliter are considered suboptimal. Levels below 15 constitute deficiency and should be treated with supplements.
Hopkins experts say pediatricians should screen all children for risk factors and order blood tests for those found to be at high risk. Children at risk for vitamin D deficiency include:
those with vitamin D-poor diets
breast-fed infants because breast milk contains minimal vitamin D
obese children
those with darker skin because darker skin synthesizes less vitamin D from sun exposure than lighter skin
those with certain medical conditions, including cystic fibrosis, type 1 and type 2 diabetes and certain gastrointestinal disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease, which can interfere with food absorption
Several large-scale studies have found that vitamin D deficiency is widespread —one in 10 U.S. children are estimated to be deficient — and that 60 percent of children may have suboptimal levels of vitamin D.
Prolonged and untreated vitamin D deficiency can affect multiple organs and functions, including bone growth and density, metabolism, heart and immunity, but it rarely causes overt symptoms and often goes unnoticed.
Vitamin D deficiency in childhood can cause skeletal deformities, brittle bones, frequent fractures and lead to premature osteoporosis in later life. However emerging evidence suggests that vitamin D is involved in far more than bone health. Recent studies have found a link between low vitamin D levels and some cancers, heart disease, suppressed immunity and even premature death. These studies do not show that vitamin D deficiency can cause cancer or heart disease, experts caution, but do suggest that vitamin D may be a powerful player in the genesis of such disorders.
Much of our life-long health is pre-programmed in childhood, and many adult diseases are rooted in exposures, lifestyle and diet during the first decade of life, experts say, and vitamin D, or lack of it, is a classic example.
Long says that she sees at least one toddler with rickets-induced bowing of the legs in her clinic every month and at least one patient per year with seizures stemming from low calcium levels. Without sufficient vitamin D, only 15 percent of the dietary calcium is absorbed, and low calcium can, in rare cases, cause seizures and heart-rhythm anomalies, Long says. Other symptoms of low calcium include poor muscle tone, insufficient dental enamel and muscle spasms.
The good news is that once detected, vitamin D deficiency can be usually corrected easily with high-dose supplementation, Long says.
To prevent vitamin D deficiency, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all breastfed infants receive supplemental 400 IU daily until they are weaned and start consuming vitamin D-fortified formula or other foods. The recommended daily dietary intake of vitamin D is 400 IU for children younger than 1 year, and 600 IU for those older than 1 year.
In addition, Long says, parents should ensure children get enough vitamin D in their diets. Foods rich on vitamin D include fish (sardines, salmon tuna), egg yolks, vitamin D-fortified milk, vitamin D-fortified orange juice, cereals, yogurt and cheese.
Founded in 1912 as the children's hospital at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Johns Hopkins Children's Center offers one of the most comprehensive pediatric medical programs in the country, with more than 92,000 patient visits and nearly 9,000 admissions each year. Hopkins Children’s is consistently ranked among the top children's hospitals in the nation. Hopkins Children’s is Maryland's largest children’s hospital and the only state-designated Trauma Service and Burn Unit for pediatric patients. It has recognized Centers of Excellence in dozens of pediatric subspecialties, including allergy, cardiology, cystic fibrosis, gastroenterology, nephrology, neurology, neurosurgery, oncology, pulmonary, and transplant. Hopkins Children's will celebrate its 100th anniversary and move to a new home in 2012. For more information, please visit www.hopkinschildrens.org
I'm glad that so many people have shown an interest in our story and have watch our news report. There were many questions that were asked that I'd like to respond to. Firstly, We didn't just have one doctor on our side. Dr. Ayoub was from Springfield Illinois but was recommended by the Vitamin D council, which is an international organization. We also had two other medical witnesses that represented our side, both from Oregon. We didn't shop around for doctors, but rather found who was the most recommended doctor in the nation for neonatal rickets.
Secondly, DHS/CPS isn't a perfect organization that is all knowing and always correct. That is quite absurd. These employees are human too, and just like anyone are quite able to make mistakes. I understand that they do have a job to do, and I respect that they do it when it's appropriate. But what bugs me is that they aren't correct in this situation, and even when shown proof by multiple sources they continue on their path and ignore the evidence.
Thirdly, Rickets isn't as rare as people think it is. Many think of it as a disease of the past, or something that only occurs in poverty stricken countries. But that is quite false. The United States, and many area's with cooler climates and less sun are experiences rickets at epidemic levels. Factors include close pregnancies, either very dark skin, or very pale skin, pure breastfeeding, and lack of sun light. In the Northern states the angle of the sun, even in winter isn't producing enough vitamin D to help bone growth. Vitamin D isn't the only factor that contributes to rickets though, other things such as alkaline phosphatase, vitamin C, potassium, vitamin K, possible parathyroid issues, and any renal condition can lead to rickets.
Our son was 5 weeks old when he was taken, and he is now 5 months old. We didn't ask the media to come to us, someone else did. But we were happy to talk to them and tell them what's going on. We didn't go to the media to "prove our point" but we hope that it does bring awareness to people that this really is a problem. If we prove nothing else, I hope that people learn the importance of Vitamin D and the importance of doing research and understanding the rickets is real and it is not a thing of the past.
