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The Privilege of Child
Abuse
Imagine having
traveled half way around the world to return home to get the
very best medical care for your child. Once arriving at a
reputable hospital, sighing a breath of relief that you
finally are in good hands and your child is receiving the
best care possible. Then after one mistake followed by
another and yet another you finally loose confidence in the
medical staff and demand a transfer - a transfer that will
inevitably expose the many mistakes made at the first
hospital but may save your child's life.
When the transfer is refused, you persist and finally get
the desired transfer yourself through no help from the first
hospital administration or staff. At the most difficult time
in your life you are then summarily attacked by the hospital
and staff and placed through a series of false accusations,
reports and hardships all designed to discredit you, knock
you off balance and seize custody of your child. It may
sound too fantastic to believe, but after learning about the
credibility of the parents and high ranking positions they
enjoyed
tutoring Embassy children overseas, it starts to
sound possible. You see, the parents happen to be both
ordained clergy and the mother is a registered nurse with
over fifteen years experience.
The hospital perceived the
parents as helpless, homeless people, which only contributed
to their continued arrogance. Little did they know who they
were actually dealing with.
What is most frightening of all is that this is not an
isolated case. It is however, perhaps the first case where
the credibility of the parents and the available evidence to
prove
malice is sufficient to prove this heinous and all to
common crime.
In
short, many hospitals and doctors are seriously abusing the
privilege afforded them to curb child abuse and are rather
choosing to willfully use it as a mechanism to protect themselves
against financial loss and professional discipline. The
privilege thus becomes the tool of abuse. A crime many
health care workers believe they are immune from any
criminal prosecution
because of the privilege they have been afforded by the
system - a privilege designed to protect children, not
victimize them.
Many families are being falsely accused of child abuse in
order that hospitals may gain custody, discredit parents,
and maintain total control over children they have harmed
through various malpractice events. Sometimes the motivation is simply to keep
a bed occupied, as many states reimburse costs for a child's
medical care. The abuse in some cases amounts to
kidnapping
and
murder for profit, because in some cases the objective
is to assume custody and deny a transfer long enough to let
the child die - keeping the mistakes contained. A transfer to a new facility would expose the
hospital and medical staff to the errors they committed -
thus exposing them to possible civil and criminal
litigation.
Parents are rarely ever aware of what actually happened to
them and their child, as
the abuse of process and
privilege that takes place are most
often perpetrated on the uneducated and poor. Most parents simply
believe that the false report was in fact an honest mistake.
In the rare cases when parents become aware of the potential
false reporting, proving malice, with hard factual evidence, is close
to impossible.
The benchmark set to prove a false child abuse report and
abuse of privilege is understandably and correctly very high
as protecting health care workers against litigation helps
to expose more cases of real child abuse. It is a good
system as long as it is not being abused. However, in far to many
situations now, it has simply become an option of choice to
protect the financial interest of a hospital or medical
professional. Proving malice, when it actually exists, is
very difficult, making it easy for hospitals and doctors to
hide behind the privilege when a false abuse report is actually
filed. For every one case that surfaces, thousands remain
unexposed.
Our goal is not to lower the bar for proving malice,
but in the few rare cases where
malice can actually be proven, resulting
penalties need to be extremely harsh to prevent continued
abuse of the system and send a clear message to
professionals and hospitals who elect to abuse the
privilege
they have been entrusted with.
Many reporting agents outside the
medical profession including teachers, clergy and other
professionals who come in contact with children are required
to report and enjoy the same privilege
when reporting. The big difference is they do not have the
related economic interest at stake nor are they as exposed
to malpractice litigation.
On what is held out as a potential test case with the real
possibility of proving
malice for the first time in an
Illinois court (possibly the nation) and "Bursting the Bubble of Privilege" which
the doctors, social workers and the hospitals are afforded, a
case has been initiated and filed in the Law Division, of
the
Circuit Court of Cook County:
Suzanne Tattan and James
McConnell
vs.
Hope Children's Hospital,
Dr. Ammar Hayani,
Dr. Luis Torero,
Ms. Anna Akan.
Case number
2007 L 010809
(CLICK ON THE
CASE NUMBER TO SEE ACTUAL CASE)
The facts of the case are quite complex but essentially
involve, in the opinion of the parents, a hospital who
refused to transfer a child to a new facility and when the
parents persisted in seeking a transfer themselves, the
hospital staff filed a false report with
DCFS alleging,
among other things, that the parents gave their son street heroin and
removed a chest tube.
Both parents are ordained
clergy and the mother is a registered nurse currently on
blind disability. The parents do not drink, smoke or do
drugs. In fact, their concern for the overuse of prescribed opiate
meds, while accepting them when needed, was well documented
and clearly understood by the majority of the medical staff,
including the social worker (in the opinion of the parents), who phoned in the report.
If she did not know, she certainly had a responsibility to
have found out or at the very least questioned the parents.
While current reporting laws do not require evidence of
wrong doing, only suspicion, the available evidence proving
malice
is substantial and will certainly show a conspiracy
to discredit these parents for selfish purpose - so believe
the parents based upon the available evidence and their
eyewitness account.
Upon interviewing the parents the
DCFS case investigator remarked,
"I can tell just looking at you two this is not possible but
I must ask you anyway, did you give your son heroin"?
Among other allegations made by the social worker at the
hospital and related staff, the parents were falsely accused of being
difficult, refusing medications, their hotel room was
abruptly discontinued by the hospital, and Mr. McConnell was
subjected to a false police report filed by someone at the
hospital alleging domestic violence, as well as two false
security reports. Additionally, the parents comport that the medical records will show
that critical care was withdrawn and withheld by the medical
staff and the transfer to a new facility intercepted. A
fabricated diagnosis of
ICU psychosis was falsely initiated
by doctors in order to cover the underlining cause of the
child's condition. This diagnosis lead to the drug Haldol, a
psychotropic medication, being prescribed (illegal in England),
that was later proved to be completely unfounded at the new hospital.
The parents believed it was simply further attempts to
confuse the issue so a transfer would not ensue.
"There is another class of psychotropic drugs, whose
large-scale use in our mental health system has unleashed
the largest epidemic of neurological disease in the history
of the world. It is called Tardive Dyskinesia, and virtually
anyone who takes the so-called antipsychotic neuroleptic
drugs (eg., Thorazine, Haldol, Risperdal, Zyprexa) for a
very long time is assured to suffer from permanent brain and
central nervous system damage."
John Breeding, PhD, Director
"It is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable that
medical staff who are charged with the responsibility of
caring for a child would conspire in such a way and make
such outlandish false reports in an attempt to remove the
loving support of a child's parents in the midst of the most
difficult struggle they have ever faced - all for money and
reputation", remarked James McConnell, the child's step
father.
"The only real child abuse that took place was from the
people charged with our child's medical care". said the mother.
"Imagine being a child in that difficult situation and
having your parents falsely accused of such acts and if the
accusations stuck, being removed from the support and loving
care only they could provide".
We normally would never directly solicit funds of any kind.
However, given the gravity of this situation and the
expensive nature of providing a legal response against
these crimes of false reporting, abuse of privilege,
kidnapping and potential murder that
continue to effect children and families across this nation,
we have decided that a one time exception is warranted.
We hope you agree.
Funds will be specifically earmarked for the above
referenced
case, to lobby for increased penalties and fines
for false reporting and to assist other parents in combating
false child abuse reports where abuse of privilege is well
established.
Help Protect Parents and Children Against False
DCFS
and DCS
Child Abuse
Reporting and Professional Abuse of Privilege.
Please Donate to the Reporting Abuse Legal
Fund Below!
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