Rickets! Could Your Child Be at Risk?

http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=3269

Rickets! Could Your Child Be at Risk? 
By Daniel Dossey
April 03, 2012

          Rickets isn't something that most people think about these days. In fact, most have never heard of the disease. For those who have, they think of it as a disease from the Great Depression, or something that only happens in poverty stricken countries. But that isn't the case. Rickets is something very real. This disease is so misunderstood that there are many in the medical community who still don't understand how great this problem is. There are thousands of infants born in the Northern States, Canada, and even Europe who suffer from Rickets, and because the medical community is still behind the times, many are being wrongfully accused of child abuse.

          Our family has been hurt by this disease. The disease itself has nearly healed with the help of Vitamin D supplementation. It is the lack of knowledge in the medical community that has hurt us. Rickets often mimics the signs of child abuse, and when a hospital doesn't know how to diagnose this disease they often choose to diagnose child abuse instead. This has led to many different problems across the country.

          When we brought our son to the hospital we merely thought he had a fever and a stomach ache. But after hearing our son scream when a hip check was performed, our life changed forever. The ER doctor ordered a stomach x-ray, and the technician noticed that our son's leg wasn't moving, and was causing my son pain. A later x-ray revealed a fractured femur. Upon reviewing the medical notes it seems clear that the ER doctor must have accidently broken our son’s bones. Of course we didn't realize that at the time, and were transferred to a children's hospital where we were put in the suspected child abuse area. A full body skeletal survey revealed more possible fractures, and this led the doctors to assume there was abuse. Fortunately, we were able to talk to a magnificent man, Dr. David Ayoub, and he was able to diagnose our son with neonatal rickets with 100% certainty. But unfortunately, our justice system didn't want to hear that answer and chose to listen to a doctor with far less experience. Erring on the side of caution seemed to be more important than keeping an innocent family together.

          When speaking to other specialists, they find our case confusing. They ask "how can this be abuse?" Our son had no bruising, no internal organ damage, no retinal hemorrhaging, no subdural hematoma, no scratches, no burns, and the tissue damage around the fracture had no damage. In fact, other than a broken bone there were absolutely no other signs of abuse. We also have a daughter who is perfectly healthy. This just doesn't make any sense. And with a diagnosis of rickets it seems even more unusual that the State would not return the child home.

          The key here is to teach others about rickets, and more importantly, Vitamin D. Vitamin D isn't just important in bone development, but also in many other areas of health. Vitamin D has been linked to autism, SIDS, depression, MS, and many other body functions. Infants who are solely breast fed need to be extra careful, and Vitamin D supplementation should be used. If your pediatrician doesn't know why Vitamin D is important, let them know that your child's health could depend on their understanding of its importance.

          In closing, rickets is real. It is in our modern world, and it is affecting far more then people give it credit for. Our government needs to catch up with these new medical discoveries, and our judicial system needs to stop tearing apart families and hurting innocent people. Pediatricians need to understand that Vitamin D is vital to the health of youth. Right now our society lives in fear, and the phrase "in the best interest of the child" has manipulated many people into following bad decisions made by our government. The best interest of the child is to have their medical issues taken care of rather than assume guilt first. Protect yourself, protect your family, and make sure that your child has a healthy Vitamin D level.

Daniel Dossey may be contacted at iamdandossey@gmail.com

Texas boy missing 8 years to remain in foster care

By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

(03-28) 10:06 PDT HOUSTON (AP) --

A judge has ruled that a Houston boy who disappeared as an infant eight years ago and who was recently found will remain in foster care while officials determine whether he should be reunited with his parents.

State District Judge Mike Schneider agreed Wednesday with a Child Protective Services recommendation that 8-year-old Miguel Morin should remain in the state's care at least until a May 16 hearing.

The judge also accepted a CPS plan to have Miguel and his parents, Auboni Champion-Morin and Fernando Morin, undergo therapy separately to see if the boy is ready for a reunion.

Miguel has been in foster care since authorities found him living with his godmother elsewhere in the state. Police say she abducted him in late 2004 when he was 8 months old.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

A Houston boy who disappeared eight years ago and was found earlier this month could soon be reunited with his parents, or he might remain in foster care.

A Texas judge is expected to make a decision Wednesday on the fate of 8-year-old Miguel Morin after a court hearing.

The boy has been in foster care since being found after police arrested a family friend. Police say the friend, who is the boy's godmother, took him in late 2004 when he was 8 months old and had him living with her in the East Texas town of San Augustine.

At the hearing, child welfare officials are to discuss whether Miguel should remain in foster care or begin to have visits with the parents, said Estella Olguin, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services in Houston. Auboni Champion-Morin and Fernando Morin, both 29 of Houston, are seeking to regain custody.

A psychotherapist who has been meeting with Miguel also could testify about how the boy might react once informed about his situation.

Olguin said CPS has made a decision on what it thinks is best for Miguel but would not disclose it ahead of Wednesday's hearing.

"His parents are saying they want what is best for Miguel and they would do what is necessary," she said.

An attorney for the parents did not return phone calls from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

DNA tests released last week confirmed Fernando Morin is Miguel's father. Test results on his wife are expected to be released at Wednesday's hearing.

The Morins have not met with Miguel since he was found but at a hearing last week, they asked state District Judge Mike Schneider if they could meet with the boy but not reveal their identity to them. The judge ordered the couple to be psychologically tested before ruling on their request.

Olguin said the Morins' four other children, who are between the ages of 7 and 14 and are living with another couple, could also be discussed Wednesday. She said confidentiality issues prevent her from detailing why the kids are not living with their parents.

Champion-Morin had previously implied her four other children were living with her and her husband.

Miguel's godmother and former baby sitter, Krystle Tanner, has been charged with kidnapping along with her mother, Gloria Jean Walker. The two remain in the San Augustine County Jail.

Officials have previously disclosed in court that Miguel, in interviews with child welfare authorities, said his name was Jaquan and identified Tanner as his mother when shown a picture of her.

The long-dormant case got new life last summer when Tanner took the boy to a hospital for a leg injury. When she couldn't provide his name or a Social Security number, hospital staff contacted child welfare investigators who eventually were able to link Tanner to the 2004 Houston case.

Child welfare officials have said the Morins were uncooperative with investigators when the boy initially was reported missing. The parents deny the allegations.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/03/28/national/a002144D49.DTL#ixzz1qTZIJ2cu

Why do our family courts rely on 'hired gun’ experts?

From The Telegraph

Recent revelations bring the authority of expert witnesses called by social services into severe doubt.

David and Julie Nevin of Swansea, with their 22-month-old son Reilly Photo: Gareth Everett/Huw Evans Agency

By Christopher Booker

7:00PM GMT 24 Mar 2012

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.

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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.

Here are a few links to Review our case:

Urgent Plea: Child Stolen

Couple denies abusing son as they battle state for custody

Linda and Daniel Dossey: couple accused of shaking child battles State for custody. Specialist found neonatal rickets. Presumption of guilt? KATU.

Couple denies abusing son as they battle state for custody

Causes: Bring Babies Home

Linfield alumna fights for child custody in rickets case

Wronglyaccusedperson.org.uk

Rickets an Epidemic

CPS doesn't know a good family from a bad one

Read "Vitamin Deficiency Rises"

Sometimes Secrecy isn't Best for the Children

AFR Front Page News

Brigham Young University Law Review

Parents Against Injustice

Tweetbuzz: Hottest stories from [forum.wronglyaccusedperson.org.uk] on Twitter

Our Story

CASA volunteers

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.

Are Innocent Parents Being Prosecuted for Killing Their Babies?

Are Innocent Parents Being Prosecuted for Killing Their Babies?

The doctor who came up with “shaken-baby syndrome” thinks so.

By Emily Bazelon|Posted Wednesday, March 14, 2012, at 4:19 PM ET

Could larger medical conditions be responsible for baby deaths that were blamed on shaken-baby syndrome?

By Michael Blackburn/Thinkstock Images.

In 1971, pediatrician Norman Guthkelch helped come up with the medical diagnosis of shaken-baby syndrome. Guthkelch and another pediatrician each wrote a paper proposing that unexplained bleeding in the brain of infants could occur because of whiplash—via shaking—without causing a visible neck injury and without direct impact to the head. That diagnosis became the basis for “do not shake” campaigns and, over the years, hundreds of criminal prosecutions for child abuse.

Now Guthkelch is worried that medical examiners and prosecutors have been too quick to turn to the shaken-baby diagnosis—and that innocent people may be in prison as a result. He called me to express that concern after I wrote about some questionable shaken-baby prosecutions for the New York Times Magazine last year. Guthkelch told Joseph Shapiro of NPR about an Arizona case he found particularly troubling after reviewing it for the defense. “I think I used the expression in my report, ‘I wouldn’t hang a cat on the evidence of shaking, as presented,’ ” he said.

Guthkelch, who is 96, was talking about the conviction of Drayton Witt, who was an 18-year-old when he was charged with shaking his 4-month-old son, Steven, to death in 2000. Based on the standard medical theory of the time, the case looked like a classic case of abusive shaking to doctors who treated Steven in the hospital as well as to the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy. Later at trial, these doctors testified against Witt, who was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years.

But now the case doesn’t look so clear-cut. It may, instead, be an example of doctors applying an outdated method of diagnosis—one that ignored Steven’s troubled medical history and thus missed an alternate explanation for his death. It’s not just Guthkelch who is raising the alarm: The medical examiner who testified against Witt, pathologist A.L. Mosley, has recanted his position at trial. Mosley now believes that Steven died of natural causes. Which raises a couple of questions: Is Drayton Witt serving time for a crime he did not commit? Will prosecutors in Arizona continue to argue that his conviction should stand?

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Steven Witt’s health problems started at birth. He was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and he had trouble breathing. He got better and went home, but a few weeks later, his mother, who lived with Drayton Witt and later married him, brought the baby to the doctor because he’d been feverish and vomiting for three days. A few weeks later, Steven was sick again, with a fever and an upper respiratory infection. From then on, his mother was in frequent touch with the pediatrician.

A few days before Steven turned 4 months old, his mother took him to the emergency room because of what was by then his familiar fever, congestion, and vomiting. The doctors thought he had pneumonia, and they prescribed an antibiotic. After Steven took his first dose, his left eye couldn’t focus, he refused the bottle, and he lay limp. The next morning, he threw up and started shaking. Witt came home from work, and he and Steven’s mother rushed the baby to the hospital.

In the ER, Steven had a grand mal seizure. He spent the next six days in the hospital, with a fever and pupils that weren’t dilating normally. The doctors weren’t sure what was wrong, but tests showed more massive seizures, even though Steven was taking anti-seizure medication. His mother told the doctors that Steven had lost head control and couldn’t track with his eyes as he could before. Still, they sent the baby home with his parents before the week was up, on May 7, with antibiotics and the anti-seizure drug Phenobarbital.

According to Witt’s defense, Steven was never again a normal, healthy baby. Sometimes, his eyes twitched back and forth. He threw up repeatedly. His mother called the pediatrician and the hospital; his grandmother worried about his health; and a neighbor who was a nurse noticed the baby’s recurring problems. Steven’s mother brought him back to the pediatrician on May 26 because he’d again had a fever for days and had been projectile vomiting. She was told to continue the antibiotics and Phenobarbital, and she and the baby were sent home.

On June 1, Witt took care of Steven during the day while his mother went to work. Shortly after 8 p.m., Witt told Steven’s mother over the phone that he thought the baby was having another seizure because his eyes weren’t normal. They agreed that Witt would pick her up at work and they would drive to the hospital. On the way, Steven had a major seizure, and Witt tried to resuscitate his son. At the hospital, it took 32 minutes to get Steven’s heart started again. He was also seriously dehydrated—because of the vomiting, he’d been unable to keep down food or liquids.

Drayton Witt and his wife

Courtesy of the Arizona Justice Project

And yet despite the baby’s long medical saga, Witt was almost immediately suspected of abuse. The social worker from child protective services who talked to Witt and his wife at 4 a.m. on June 2 wrote in her notes that the couple had no specific explanation for the baby’s “severe head trauma.” After Steven’s death on the afternoon of June 2, Dr. Mosley, who knew that the doctors at the hospital thought he’d been killed by shaken baby syndrome, concluded that the death was a homicide caused by “shaken/impact syndrome.” Mosley noted that Steven had no neck injury, no bruising or fractures, no external signs of abuse. But none of that mattered. At Witt’s trial, Mosley testified against him, along with several other doctors. Because of the state of the science at the time, Witt had just one doctor in his corner, who only partially rebutted the shaken-baby theory.

Twelve years later, lawyers from the Arizona Justice Project have gone to court asking for a hearing for Witt. They want the state courts to reopen the case and order a new trial, based on the way the scientific understanding of shaken-baby syndrome has shifted. The mainstream position still holds that it is possible to shake a baby to death. But many doctors now allow that a history of illness like Steven’s can account for the subdural and retinal bleeding, and brain swelling, that used to be blamed exclusively on shaken-baby syndrome.

It’s Steven’s medical history that distresses Norman Guthkelch. “This was always a sickly baby,” he told me when I reached him over the phone. “I was taught to start by considering the non-criminal explanation, and this little guy was in sufficient trouble without any need to postulate someone had shaken him.” Mosley has joined Guthkelch in asking the Arizona courts to revisit Witt’s conviction. “There is now no longer consensus in the medical community that the findings I reported in my autopsy report are reliable proof of SBS [shaken baby syndrome] or child abuse,” Mosley told the court. “Steven had a complicated medical history, including unexplained neurological problems. He had no outward signs of abuse. If I were to testify today, I would state that I believe Steven’s death was likely the result of a natural disease process, not SBS.”

Drayton Witt reminds me of Shirley Ree Smith, a grandmother accused of shaking her baby to death in California in 1996. Both may well have been convicted based on past medical assumptions that may not stand up to present scrutiny. That may also be true of some people sent to prison more recently. I still wonder about the conviction of Trudy Munoz Rueda, a daycare provider whom I wrote about in the Times Magazine. Another is a former New York daycare provider named Alma Calderaro. When she was convicted of assault and child endangerment in 2009, and sentenced to eight and half years in prison, Calderaro’s lawyer did not call a single medical expert to testify on her behalf. Now on appeal, three doctors are saying that the baby who collapsed in Calderaro’s care had subdural bleeding that was chronic and that this condition, rather than shaking, probably caused her injuries. Prosecutors have until mid-April to respond.

By calling attention to these cases, I don’t mean to suggest that every defendant convicted of harming a baby who has the symptoms associated with shaken-baby syndrome is innocent. I’ve learned from my reporting that these cases are incredibly fact-specific. In a pending prosecution in Queens that has gotten a lot of attention, the baby who died, Annie Li, had serious bone fractures as well as internal bleeding. The lawyer for Li’s father, who has been charged with manslaughter and second-degree murder, says that while the test results aren’t in yet, a congenital bone condition may be to blame for the fractures. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, the district attorney who prosecuted Drayton Witt hasn’t responded to his petition for a hearing and a new trial. As these cases move through the courts, they are testing prosecutors’ and judges’ willingness to undo old verdicts. That’s never an easy step to take. But sometimes it’s the only one that is just.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/03/when_babies_die_are_doctors_too_quick_to_blame_it_on_shaken_baby_syndrome_.single.html 

Free, But Not Cleared: Ernie Lopez Comes Home

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.

Watch Ernie Lopez, Released on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

A jury in 2003 convicted Lopez — who was profiled by ProPublica, FRONTLINE and NPR last year – of sexually assaulting six-month-old Isis Vas, whom he was babysitting. The girl died shortly after the alleged attack.

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.

Watch Ernie Lopez Arrives Home on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

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.

Watch The Free World on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/the-child-cases/free-but-not-cleared-ernie-lopez-comes-home/