Can DNA Help You Find Your Birth Parents?

Can DNA Help You Find Your Birth Parents? - Part I. Ancestry. Nov 13, 2014.

Can DNA Help You Find Your Birth Parents? - Part II. Ancestry. Nov 19, 2014.

Protecting Mothers Against Gender-Plus Bias

I would like to share a 3-pt series from the American Bar Association.

Protecting Mothers Against Gender-Plus Bias: Part 1
By Diane L. Redleaf
October 25, 2011

Protecting Mothers Against Gender-Plus Bias: Part 2
By Diane L. Redleaf, Melissa L. Staas, and Jonathon N. Fazzola
March 29, 2012

Protecting Mothers Against Gender-Plus Bias: Part 3
By Diane L. Redleaf and Melissa L. Staas
July 9, 2012

I want my baby back

http://youtu.be/PTyO_uXvz9M

 

Parents should flee UK to stop social workers taking children,

says Lib Dem family campaigner

(Among others,) I am seeking these PDF's.

Among others, I am seeking these titles in PDF.

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

* * *

 

A pitfall in the diagnosis of child abuse: external hydrocephalus, subdural hematoma, and retinal hemorrhages.

Neurosurgical Focus

 

Overrepresentation of males in traumatic brain injury of infancy and in infants with macrocephaly: further evidence that questions the existence of shaken baby syndrome.

The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology

more PDF's

Please note that I have found more PDF's

that may be useful for research.

I have added them to my collection,

which you can access HERE.

Prisoners of Profit

Prisoners of Profit - pt 1
The Huffington Post

by Chris Kirkham

Oct 22, 2013

Prisoners of Profit - pt 2
The Huffington Post

by Chris Kirkham

Oct 23, 2013

Jail social workers who take children without telling parents why, says Britain's top family judge

 

Jail social workers who take children without telling parents why,
says Britain's top family judge

Mail Online

Oct. 24 2013

 

Tanya Marrhoubi-Sadowsky, Parent Testimony

http://youtu.be/ZiamQU8JPgk

* * *

The Amanda Truth Project 
(web page & blog)

* * *

see also:
“Maybe It Wasn’t Child Abuse”
The Paralegal Society

Aug 20, 2012

SBS? premature health problems?

In reading the following two articles, I couldn't help but wonder: is it SBS, or health problems related to prematurity?

 

Des Moines infant suffers head trauma; dad arrested 

Des Moines Register

by Register staff & news services

The Shaken Baby Syndrome Lie

The Health Wyze Report

by Sarah C. Corriher

False Abuse Reports Trouble Child Welfare Advocates

False Abuse Reports Trouble Child Welfare Advocates (via City Limits)

In some neighborhoods in this city, it’s not uncommon for people to file an allegation of child abuse or neglect to settle a grudge. In a meeting with City Limits, lawyers and social workers from The Bronx Defenders, which represents parents with…

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two articles on SBS

I would like to share two articles that have recently come to my attention.
They both address the topic of shaken baby syndrome.

Child Protective Svc's & Controversial Medical Diagnoses
The Amanda Truth Project
by: Tonya Sadowsky
June 11, 2012

Law Expert Lays out Legal Trends in Childrens’ Cases
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
by: Maggie Lee
August 26, 2013

Exonerated but forever tarnished? On the lingering stigma of the wrongfully convicted

I would like to share an important article that I have come across recently. Exonerated but forever tarnished? Onthe lingering stigma of the wrongfully convicted was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest and was posted on June 20, 2013.

 

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Wrongful convictions are disturbingly common. In the USA alone, over 1,050 innocent people who were found guilty in court have subsequently been exonerated. A new study, the first to systematically study stigma towards convicted innocents, finds that the old adage is true - mud sticks. Convictions may be overturned, but stigma persists.

Kimberley Clow and Amy-May Leach surveyed 86 psychology students in Canada about either "people who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime"; "people who have been convicted of a crime that they actually committed"; or "people in general".

The students rated wrongfully convicted people in a similar way to offenders, including perceiving them as incompetent and cold, and having negative attitudes towards them.  Although the students desired less social distance from the wrongly convicted compared with offenders, they preferred to have more distance from them than people in general. And while they expressed more pity for wrongly convicted people than offenders, this didn't translate into greater support for giving them assistance such as job training or subsidised housing. In fact, the students were more in favour of giving monthly living expenses to people in general as opposed to the wrongly convicted.

"A wrongly convicted individual should be viewed as any other non-convicted citizen," said Clow and Leach. "Our findings, however, suggest that this does not occur ... Wrongly convicted persons are not perceived as other citizens."

Bear in mind these results are only a tentative first step towards greater understanding of this issue. It's unsafe to generalise confidently from a student sample, and we haven't learned much about why the participants stigmatised the wrongly convicted so harshly. It's possible the students held a general belief that wrongly convicted people are likely guilty of other crimes. Or perhaps they believed them morally contaminated by their time in prison.

Despite its limitations, the new study chimes with anecdotal evidence. Consider the case of the unfortunately named Kirk Bloodsworth. In 1993, after nearly nine years in prison, Bloodsworth was a free man thanks to DNA testing that showed he was not guilty of raping and killing a nine-year-old girl - the first time the scientific technique had been used in this way. Yet despite his release, Bloodsworth continued to be vilified, including having "child killer" scrawled in dirt on his truck.
_________________________________

 

Clow, K., and Leach, A. (2013). After innocence: Perceptions of individuals who have been wrongfully convicted Legal and Criminological Psychology DOI: 10.1111/lcrp.12018

--Further reading--The Innocence Project works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted using DNA evidence.

WA State Vaccine Law Threatens Exemptions & Violates Privacy

WA State Vaccine Law Threatens Exemptions & Violates Privacy

National Vaccine Information Center

by Barbara Loe Fisher

posted: 2/13/2011

Presumed guilty until proven innocent...even then you're still guilty

I would like to share a piece by Carey Roberts - Presumed guilty until proven innocent ... even then you're still guilty - which was published June 8, 2011 on RenewAmerica.com. (Other pieces by Mr. Roberts on RenewAmerica.com can be found here.)

 

_____ _____ _____

 

 

This past Thursday men and women from around the country convened to share their experiences facing down false allegations of abuse. The event was a sobering testament to how the former War on Crime has morphed into Open Season on the Innocent, or so it would appear.

The meeting was the first-ever False Allegations Summit, held in Washington, DC and sponsored by a group called Stop Abusive and Violent Environments. Yes, there were anguished sighs and tears as persons recounted their daily battles — for some, obsessions — to exonerate themselves and restore their good names.

The Summit led off with the revelation that 11% of Americans report they have been falsely accused of child abuse, domestic violence, or sexual assault. This astonishing number means tens of millions of persons have had their foreheads branded with the scarlet Abuser label.

The Summit then featured presentations by a parade of stakeholder organizations that have witnessed first-hand the effects of false claims.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers highlighted the "immense, often irreparable harm caused to our clients for false allegations, not only to reputation and personal relationships, but often to the accused individual's livelihood and even health."

The Home School Legal Defense Association documented repeated instances where an anonymous hotline call triggered an unannounced visit by a social worker, sometimes ending in the strip search of a bewildered child. These are not isolated cases — nationwide, over 85% of child abuse allegations are found to be unsubstantiated: http://www.saveservices.org/false-allegations-awareness-month/

The American Coalition for Fathers and Children then testified how an allegation of child abuse or domestic violence often becomes a tactical ploy for an impending child-custody dispute. "When a father can be sentenced to months in jail for simply leaving a gallon of milk on his child's doorstep, we have indeed reached the point of 'hysteria' about the issue of domestic violence," ACFC executive director Michael McCormick commented.

The National Coalition for Men representative recounted the plight of Raul, a ship-welder who was caught in an unhappy marriage with an abusive woman. She began to accuse him of a litany of offenses including sexual abuse of their baby. As the conflict escalated, the woman's family started to threaten the man. Just two weeks ago, Raul was discovered lying in the California desert, a gunshot wound to the head.

Then Encounters International described how so-called Green Card Girls play the abuse card to secure their work authorization and citizenship. Recalling her childhood experiences in the former Soviet Union, Natasha Spivack told the spell-bound audience:

"In Stalinist Russia, innocent people were presumed guilty if reported as 'Enemies of the Motherland.' They were sent to the Gulag or executed without due process. In the United States of America, citizens are presumed guilty if reported as 'Domestic Abusers'....they lost their jobs, their mental health, their reputation, their trust in justice, and their self-esteem."

Then it was then the turn of the victims, the persons falsely accused, to speak out and break the shroud of silence and shame that too often envelopes the lives of the wrongfully charged.

Cheryl Shanks of New Jersey recounted how her former husband fabricated claims of abuse so he could get special treatment by the immigration authorities: "This ordeal began in August of 2003...The price on my family has been immeasurable. My son has his own therapist who he sees weekly."

Carl Starling of Maryland described how his former wife accused him of repeatedly striking her with his fist, but didn't experience the need to pay a visit to the hospital emergency room to tend to her wounds.

Gordon Smith of Delaware described the Mad-Hatter experience of having an abusive wife who sought to be absolved by accusing him of the very actions that she had committed. When he sought to file perjury charges, the prosecutor demurred, leading Smith to deplore the "state-sponsored protection" of false accusers.

And Terri Quick of Pennsylvania described the ordeal of her son who had engaged in consensual sex with a girlfriend. When the relationship went sour and she decided to re-connect with her previous flame, he suddenly found himself accused of rape. The evidence was all circumstantial, but enough to secure a conviction.

But it was Ben Vonderheide of Pennsylvania who stole the show: http://www.saveservices.org/2011/06/video-false-allegations-summit-in-america-do-the-accused-deserve-a-hearing/

In 2007 his ex-girlfriend was found guilty of three counts of making false statements to law enforcement officials. Despite the conviction, the ex- continues her campaign to vilify dad in the eyes of her son, and family judges refuse to lift a finger to stop the calumnies. "You're presumed guilty until proven innocent, and even then you're still considered guilty," Vonderheide wryly told the audience.

Are things as bad in the United States as they were in Soviet Russia? Of course not.

But accounts of anonymous informants, a galling presumption of guilt, ideologically driven prosecutions, a no-way-out criminal justice system, and the tacit condoning of perjury all point to an abuse industry that is spinning out of control.

© Carey Roberts

Witch Hunting Jenny McCarthy for Vaccine Talking

 

The National Vaccine Information Center

has recently published this article

and the above video.

Federal Funding for Child Welfare

I would like to share Federal Funding for Child Welfare on about.com,

of which I became aware from a post by Legally Kidnapped.

Southampton couple feared they would lose baby over false abuse claims

Southampton couple feared they would lose baby over false abuse claims
by: Melanie Adams, Health Reporter
Southern Daily Echo
Feb 2, 2013

_____ _____ _____ _____ _____

 

A COUPLE suffered “three weeks of hell” after social workers accused them of harming their baby daughter.

 

Kelly Cook and partner Ian Hutchison found themselves under investigation, leaving them terrified that seven-week-old Ava would be taken away from them.

 

Their traumatic ordeal began after their health visitor, during a regular check-up a week before Christmas, noticed a reddish mark on the bottom of Ava's right foot and called in Southampton City Council's child services.

 

Convinced it was a bruise - which a baby so young would have been unable to cause itself - social services immediately drafted in the police and doctors as they launched an investigation into the young family who were left petrified that they would lose their daughter.

Within hours Kelly, 35, and Ian, 31, found themselves under investigation at the hospital where a number of paediatricians and a dermatologist examined Ava.

 

Unable to rule out a birthmark they were asked to bring Ava back two days later for a second look.
 

But on this visit the dermatologist was not there and because the mark had faded it was judged to be a bruise and Ava was forced to undergo numerous tests, scans and x-rays.

Desperate Kelly and Ian insisted that the mark was not a bruise and said it kept reappearing and fading.

 

They even provided photographic evidence to prove it but nobody listened. They were told that social services believed Ava was at serious risk of harm and her parents were only allowed to keep her if they stayed with Ian's parents.

 

But despite the serious concerns over Ava's safety, the family did not see or hear from social services for nine days over the Christmas period, leaving them totally in the dark of what was happening.
 

It wasn't until December 31, when a social worker finally did visit, that she witnessed the mark appearing and disappearing on Ava's foot, proving what her parents had been arguing from the start - that it wasn't a bruise.

 

A week later an examination by a dermatologist at the hospital confirmed that it was not a bruise and within ten minutes Kelly and carpenter Ian got the call they had been longing for.

 

They were told that the case against them was closed and they could return home with Ava.

 

But there was no apology or explanation.

 

Now Kelly and Ian, from Shirley, Southampton, are demanding answers from social services about why they were never listened to, why Ava was never visited while they were staying at her grandparents house if she was deemed to be at serious risk and why they have not yet received an apology.

 

Kelly, a legal secretary, said: “We were effectively house bound over Christmas. We couldn't go anywhere without Ian's parents and even my parents had to be police checked before we could go to their house on Boxing Day.

 

“Yet what we cannot understand is that if they were so worried about Ava, why did no one come and visit us for nine days? It makes no sense.

 

“Had they listened to us, looked at the photos I had taken of Ava's foot, this could have all been cleared up within two days.

 

“Instead, they refused to listen. They ruined our first Christmas with Ava, which we will never get back and we spent weeks petrified that we might lose her.

 

“What they have put Ava through, with all the tests, scans and x-rays, being poked and prodded, is abuse in itself. It has been very traumatic for Ava to go through all that.

 

“I think it is disgusting and they haven't even apologised.

 

“We were put through three weeks of hell and we want this exposed so that other innocent families do not endure the grief and heartache that we have been through with our baby daughter.”

 

Ava is now waiting for an outpatient's appointment with the dermatologist to determine what the mark is.

 

Kelly and Ian have made a formal complaint to Southampton City Council's social services over their handling of the case in the hope that changes can be made to prevent other parents going through the same trauma.
 

After a meeting with social services bosses earlier this week, the family are now waiting for a report into their case, expected to be complete by Tuesday.
 

When the Daily Echo asked the council to comment on Ava’s case and the claims made by her parents a spokesman said: “We are unable to speak about individual cases but the council does take any complaint it receives seriously and this follows a standard procedure based on national guidelines.
 

“In order to ensure that a complaint is fully investigated, there is a time line to ensure the complainant knows when they will receive an answer.”

Challenging an Assumption

As my regular visitors know,
I am compiling a series of articles on SBS & MSBP
(which can be accessed by using the SBS - MSBP link above).

I have recently become aware of the article
Challenging an Assumption by Kate Ledger.

I tried finding this as a PDF, but was unable to find a free version.

 (However, a Letters to the Editor response is in PDF form.)

So, for now, I present the article to you in HTML, as a blog post.

______________________________

 

Minnesota Medicine

August 2009

Challenging an Assumption

A pathologist questions shaken baby syndrome.

By Kate Ledger

For John Plunkett, M.D., the case in 1986 that would put a new spin on his career was not unlike others he’d seen before. A general and forensic pathologist who occasionally consulted for attorneys, Plunkett was asked to review the post-mortem findings following the death of an 18-month-old girl.

According to the mother, the baby had climbed onto the arm of a couch to reach for a figurine on a shelf, then fell, hitting her head on the linoleum floor. But physicians at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital and the Hennepin County Medical Examiner didn’t believe the story. The baby showed bleeding inside the dura within the skull, hemorrhaging of the blood vessels in the retinas, and altered function in the brain. Those who’d examined her both before and after she died saw no evidence of impact on her head. “They were convinced this could only be inflicted trauma,” Plunkett recalls. What they believed, based on the specific injuries, was that the mother had shaken her baby to death.

As the mother went to trial, Plunkett began to wonder about the symptoms: Where was the evidence that subdural bleeding, retinal hemorrhaging, and brain swelling—considered the classic triad of signs pointing to a shaken baby—added up to murder? His questioning of the post-mortem findings spurred him onto a new tack of research, and he began to investigate the concept of “shaken baby syndrome.” What he’s found over the years has turned him into a controversial figure in cases of alleged child abuse. Today, physicians in pediatrics and pathology have wide-ranging opinions of the widely published pathologist, now retired from his hospital work, as he continues to consult, write, and speak on infant head injury. “He’s both revered and reviled,” says pathologist Susan Roe, M.D., who works for Regina Medical Center and serves as a forensic pathologist for the Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s office. But Plunkett has remained emphatic about his belief: “You can’t shake a baby to death.”

Parsing the Evidence

John Jerome Plunkett was born in St. Paul and lived first in Highland Park and then in the middle- and working-class Midway neighborhood. His father was a lawyer who spent almost his entire career as a Ramsey County District Judge. His uncles were also attorneys, and his brothers and cousins went into the field as well. “I grew up with a real love for the law,” Plunkett acknowledges. But while completing a bachelor’s degree in history and chemistry at the University of Minnesota, he found himself drawn to medicine instead.

After earning a medical degree in 1972, he realized he was interested most of all in asking certain types of questions about patient cases, which led him to pathology and “the most scientific part of medicine.” After an internship and pathology residency at St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center (later to become Regions Hospital), he completed a forensic fellowship at the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office. His plan was to be “a general pathologist and a medical educator first and a forensic pathologist second.”

True to his career goals, Plunkett worked as a pathologist and director of education at what is now Regina Medical Center in Hastings and spent nearly a decade as Hennepin County’s deputy medical examiner. As a forensic pathologist, his findings were often used in court, placing him at the intersection of science and the law, something he found “very appealing.”

One trait Plunkett came to be known for was his willingness to wonder aloud. Pathologist Janice Ophoven, M.D., who trained concurrently with Plunkett and worked with him at the medical examiner’s office, says he was always comfortable questioning. “He would always ask, ‘What’s your proof for this?’ and he wasn’t afraid to challenge people.” Plunkett did just that in the 1986 case in which the mother was convicted of second-degree murder. When Plunkett looked at autopsy photographs of the 18-month-old girl, he discerned a bruise on the skull where others had seen none. “I said, ‘Wait a second. Why couldn’t this impact injury have caused what we’re seeing in the brain?’” he recalls. The response he received from other physicians was that short-distance falls can’t cause serious injury or death in an infant.

But Plunkett was skeptical. He went back to the literature, looking for evidence. Two journal articles, one American and one British, published in the early 1970s had established the diagnostic paradigm that would come to be known as shaken baby syndrome. In the absence of any other signs of trauma, the papers stated, subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhaging, and brain swelling were signs of forceful shaking. Furthermore, the papers stated, no other kind of trauma could cause the three symptoms.

Digging into case studies of accidental deaths, however, Plunkett found incidents that suggested otherwise. In 2001, he published an article in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology documenting 18 confirmed cases in which infants and young children died from falls of less than 10 feet. “So clearly it can happen,” he says. At the same time, he began looking closely at literature from the automotive industry, in particular, studies of child crash-test dummies, where researchers had calculated the effects of acceleration and deceleration on the human body. With calculations of cycles per second (human hands can only shake a baby at about four cycles per second) and how far the head moves, Plunkett explains, “using just plain old trigonometry you can calculate the acceleration [of the head], the change in velocity over time.” Comparing that figure to known injury thresholds based on experimental results from animal studies, cadaver studies, or reconstruction of real-life accidents, it’s possible to determine the type of forces that would cause injury. Even though the forces involved in shaking could cause an injury such as whiplash, Plunkett states, “they’re nowhere even near the threshold required to cause brain injury.”

He wasn’t alone in wondering about shaken baby syndrome. Across the country, a handful of researchers had begun questioning it. One was pediatric neurosurgeon Ann-Christine Duhaime, M.D., now at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, whose research involved modeling head trauma. Her studies showed that shaking would cause less than one-tenth the amount of force needed to inflict injury.

To Plunkett’s thinking, a variety of other scenarios could result in the classic triad of symptoms. He suggests meningitis, encephalitis, or chronic subdural hematomas, for instance, a yet- undiagnosed inborn error of metabolism or “some natural disease.” In addition to writing journal articles questioning the classic triad and presenting his findings at conferences, Plunkett began testifying in court cases, opposing prosecution that used it to get murder convictions. What he has emphasized is that the medical community still lacks sufficient proof for its definition of shaken baby syndrome. In the absence of other injuries—when there are no head bruises or bumps, and no signs of old broken bones or bruises on other parts of a baby’s body—the classic triad does not mean shaking necessarily has taken place. He believes that the seminal papers from the 1970s misinterpreted the original research results of Ayub Ommaya, M.D., a neurosurgeon and biomechanical engineer, who had at one time been head of the neurosciences branch of the National Institutes of Health. Over the years, physicians’ refusal to re-examine the tenets about shaking in babies with no other signs of injury, has undoubtedly led to the conviction of innocent citizens. “People just believed this stuff for so long,” Plunkett says, “it took on a life of its own.”

A New Look at the Issue

Ophoven, who is now assistant medical examiner for St. Louis County and a specialist in child abuse and injury, remembers being put off at first when Plunkett began questioning shaken baby syndrome. Then, in the late 1990s, as more papers appeared questioning the symptoms, she began to review the literature and changed her mind. “The fundamental evidence has never been scientifically validated,” she says. Since testifying for the defense in cases where no signs of abuse are present but the baby shows the classic triad, even physicians have called her names, from “defense whore” to “wicked.” Ophoven adds, “John has been called worse.”

Plunkett’s influence may not have pushed the majority of forensic pathologists to become defense advocates. But some may now be more conservative in their judgment, speculates Roe. “John has been one of the key people getting our whole community to relook at this whole issue,” she says. Many forensic pathologists might be more inclined today to call a case with no other evidence “undetermined” rather than label it homicide, she adds.

But pediatricians, many of whom say they like Plunkett personally, having met him in court or at conferences, have taken issue with his findings. Some have questioned the math in the biomechanical engineering studies. Others have looked closely at studies such as Duhaime’s and critiqued the modeling of a baby’s brain, pointing out that no material exists to replicate a newborn’s skull. Although many physicians concur that it’s positive to be asking questions about the validity of the diagnosis, ultimately “there is no credible medical evidence to support the notion that shaking does not cause these injuries,” says Robert Block, M.D., former chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect. Block co-authored a policy statement that was issued earlier this year by the AAP, formally changing the name shaken baby syndrome to abusive head trauma. (For public health messages to families, the term shaken baby syndrome will still be used.) The goal of the paper, says Block, was to shift the focus to the injuries and the incidence of abuse and away from the debate over whether shaking is the key mechanism.

Without a doubt, the debate has prompted a closer look at the classic triad. In the last decade, notes pediatrician Rich Kaplan, M.D., of Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota, research has offered refined descriptions of some of the symptoms associated with shaking. “For instance, there’s greater understanding of retinal hemorrhaging, and today, we know that a small amount of bleeding in the back of the retina can be caused by something other than abuse.” Kaplan adds that pediatricians have become better informed in the last several years and now consider a wide range of possible causes; but he still worries that the opposite is of greater concern: Pediatricians and other health care providers are still not seeing abuse when it occurs.

Even so, Plunkett maintains that the triad continues to be used so vigorously by prosecutors that an accused person faces an uphill battle. “You basically have to prove your innocence,” he says, estimating that the number of people inappropriately convicted might be in the thousands. Even when caregivers are on record for having “confessed,” he points out, their acknowledgment of “shaking” has referred to the moments of reviving a baby who was already unconscious or even jostling a baby on a knee.

What’s given him hope lately is that in the United Kingdom and Canada, old cases of abuse have recently been reopened and reinvestigated with new awareness of the controversy about shaken baby symptoms. In Britain, for instance, if the only findings are subdural hematoma, retinal bleeding, and brain swelling—with no other signs of trauma, no history of harm, and no witnesses—they are no longer enough to bring charges. Plunkett believes that the United States is still far off in setting justice straight, but he hopes the medical world will eventually take note of what’s “really a paradigm change” in approaching infant injury evaluation. “At the end of the day,” he says, “the default diagnosis is not abuse, it is ‘I don’t know.’” MM

Kate Ledger is a freelance writer in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a frequent contributor to Minnesota Medicine.

Homer Herbert Found Not Guilty of Capital Murder of Two Year Old Child

Homer Herbert Found Not Guilty of Capital Murder of Two Year Old Child (via PR Newswire)

The Cochran Firm - Mobile Criminal Defense team pleased with case results MOBILE, Ala., Oct. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Homer "Rock" Herbert, II was found not guilty of capital murder September 21, 2012 after standing trial in the death of a 2 year old…

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Outrage: hospital 'kidnaps,' injects newborn, expels mom

I would like to share a piece by Gina Miller - Outrage: hospital 'kidnaps,' injects newborn, expels mom - which was published August 2, 2012 on RenewAmerica.com. (Other pieces by Ms. Miller on RenewAmerica.com can be found here.)

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There is certainly no shortage of examples of so-called "authorities" in our nation grossly overstepping their bounds and trampling the rights of ordinary citizens who are oftenpowerless to stop them. We see stories of this almost daily. Just recently we have seen a Christian in Phoenix sentenced to jail for holding Bible studies in his own home, and in Oregon, a man was sentenced to jail for collecting rainwater on his private property.

Now, we have another nightmarish incident in which the power Nazis will hopefully be held accountable, thanks to a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit advocacy Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

The story dates back to June of 2010 when a Pennsylvania woman, Jodi Ferris, went into labor earlier than expected. She and her husband Scott had planned on her having their baby at home with a midwife, but due to the early labor, the midwife recommended she take an ambulance to the hospital. Jodi delivered her baby girl, "Annie," in the back of the ambulance in the Hershey Medical Center parking lot.

Hospital staff admitted Jodi and her baby for observation, and as reported by HSLDA Chairman Michael Farris,As any mother would do, Jodi immediately began to ask the nurses and attendants how her baby was doing. The hospital staff was utterly unresponsive. When they started to give Jodi an injection, she asked what it was and what it was for. They gave her vague answers like, "It's just to help." Only after giving her the injection of oxytocin did they tell her what it was and then asked, "You aren't allergic to that are you?"

Jodi persisted in asking about Annie. No one would tell her anything other than "she's in good hands and you'll be able to see her soon."

Eventually a doctor told her that Annie scored a 9 on a physical exam applied to newborns known as the APGAR test. A score of 8 or higher is considered healthy. (It is unclear when the score was given since she was in the ambulance at birth.) But shortly after this a different doctor told Jodi that Annie was "very sick" and would need to stay in the hospital. This doctor's comments were accompanied by an explanation of his disdain for midwives saying, "Too many people think they know what they're doing."

About an hour later, another hospital staffer finally brought Annie to Jodi and said, "The baby is doing good. She will be able to go home in no time."

Well, that did not happen. Later another staff member told Scott and Jodi that Annie would need to be kept for 48 to 72 hours for observation, and when asked why, the staffer told them the law requires that the baby be kept, although such a law does not exist in Pennsylvania. Apparently the hospital's "risk management" department was not worried about Annie, who was perfectly healthy, but rather worried about the hospital being sued if something went wrong with the baby after being discharged.

The story kept getting worse, as Mr. Farris reported,Late in the afternoon, a government social worker named Angelica Lopez-Heagy came into Jodi's room announcing that she was there to conduct an investigation. Jodi asked to know the allegations. The social worker claimed that it would be against the law for her to show Jodi the allegations.

Jodi replied that she would not be comfortable answering the questions if she couldn't know the allegations. Immediately the social worker proclaimed, "Since you're not going to cooperate, I'll just go and call the police and we can take custody of the baby."

Fearing that the social worker would carry out her threat, Jodi replied that she was willing to cooperate.

The social worker soon intimated that the issue was Jodi's refusal to consent to medical treatment for the baby. Jodi replied that she had no idea why anyone would say that. The social worker claimed that she had refused to allow a Vitamin K shot for Annie. Jodi replied that no one had asked her about such a shot. Moreover, she had overheard hospital staffers saying that they had already given Annie such a shot.

Neither the social worker nor any hospital staffer ever gave Jodi or Scott any example of any medically necessary treatment that they had refused for Annie.

At this point, Scott left the hospital to tend to their older children who were staying with friends.

Here we have another social worker Nazi. Child "protective" services workers are notorious for abusing their authority. Just do an Internet search of "child protective services abuse of power" and you'll get an eyeful of the shameful behavior of too many of these people.

The hospital staff asked to run some tests on Annie, and Jodi agreed, but then they wanted to give Annie a Hepatitis B shot, and Jodi wanted to have her or the baby tested for Hepatitis B before letting them give Annie the shot, but the hospital staff claimed that they forgot to do the test earlier, and at that time it was too late in the day to do the test.

Then, as Mr. Farris wrote,When the social worker pressed her to make an immediate decision about this shot, Jodi asked her if they could simply wait until Scott got back before they decided.

Put yourself in Jodi's shoes at this moment. You gave birth that morning in an ambulance. The hospital has made wild and conflicting claims about your baby's health all day long. You are exhausted. You are in pain. Your husband has gone to check on your children. And a social worker who has threatened to take your baby into police custody is standing in your hospital room demanding that you make an immediate decision.

Jodi simply said, "Please can't this wait until my husband gets back[?]"

The social worker renewed her threat. If Jodi would not answer her question right then, she would call the police. And then the social worker started adding conditions. She and Scott would have to agree to sign a safety plan before she could conclude her investigation.

Jodi said that she wanted her husband and an attorney to look at the plan. She felt she was in no position to read such a document and really understand what she was being pressured to sign.

And then the story turns ugly.

The social worker left the room and called the police. Without a court order they took custody of Annie, immediately claiming that she was suffering from illness or injury — a patently false claim.

The social worker consented to the administration of the Hepatitis B shot even though no blood test had been done.

The police made Jodi Ferris get up out of her hospital bed and escorted her to the entrance — they were expelling her from the hospital because she had not signed the "safety plan."

Scott met her at the entrance to the hospital. The police escorted them both off of the grounds of the hospital.

Jodi was told that she would be allowed to return every three hours to nurse the baby through the night.

Jodi and Scott were forced to spend the night that she had given birth in their car in a nearby parking lot. You read that right. They kicked this mother out of the hospital, and in order to be close enough to feed her child, she had to sleep in the car.

To add insult to injury, Jodi was given access to Annie only sporadically and not every three hours.

This is an astonishingly horrible story! I just cannot imagine having to deal with a Gestapo-like social worker and such bizarre treatment by a hospital staff!

It was the next day that a judicial officer held a hearing, and after learning all the facts, immediately returned baby Annie to her parents — but not before the hospital staff gave her at least one injection without the consent of her parents.

Although this is not a home schooling case, the HSLDA has stepped up to hold this hospital, the social worker and the police accountable for their reprehensible treatment of the Ferrises and their baby. In March of this year the HSLDA filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that the actions of Hershey Medical Center, the social services woman and the police officers violated the Fourth and 14th Amendment rights of Scott and Jodi Ferris.

As the HSLDA's Mr. Farris stated,No parents should be put through this kind of ordeal. It is not a crime to ask questions about the well-being of your child. It is not a crime to ask for testing to ensure that a procedure is needed before it is done. It is not a crime to be a protective mom.

It is a moral offense of the highest order to kick a mother out of a hospital and to seize her child on the day of her birth simply because a mom wanted to have her husband read a legal document before she signed.

Both the medical personnel and the social worker engaged in outrageous behavior toward this family.

And we believe that they violated their rights under the Constitution of the United States. And we are going to court to prove it.

... We are taking this case because we are tired of seeing the erosion of parental rights in virtually every area of life. Parental rights in medical cases have an impact on broader parental rights, including educational decisions.

And the plain fact is this: If we don't fight for parental rights, it is probable that our rights will be eroded bit by bit until there is nothing that remains.

... When government workers run over parents in cases like this, the lesson that needs to be taught is to the government.

... All of our families are at risk when the government is allowed to run over one of us. When we stand together, we can fight back for freedom and for truth.

Thanks for giving as the Lord leads you. And pray for us. This is not an easy case. We really need your ongoing prayers.

You can read Mr. Farris' entire report at the HSLDA website, where you can also donate to help fund their valuable work for the Ferrises and other victims of an out-of-control government bureaucracy.

© Gina Miller