Please read this carefully, this may happen to any of us....
This story was printed in the January 2007 issue of Reader's Digest by Salley Shannon..
The Pediatrics clinic at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland was jammed. Alice Velasquez, dressed in Army fatigues, passed four-month old Liliana to her husband, Miguel, so she could stretch and check the clock. They had been in a waiting room at National Naval Medical Center for over an hour and a half. Now Alice was late for duty at the Pentagon.
"Don't worry, honey, it won't be much longer, " Miguel told Alice. Then he kissed Liliana, and she began to coo. A few days before, Alice had found two little bumps over Liliana's left ribs. They felt bony, and bone problems ran in Alice's family. The couple decide to ask the doctor to do x-rays during the "well baby" visit.
Husband and wife were a study in contrasts: Alice, blonde, outgoing, excitable; Miguel, olive-skinned, quiet, placid. He kept her calm until their turn finally came. Alice took Liliana. Miguel grabbed the baby's diaper bag and toys, and they went to the exam room. It was the last moment of ordinary family routine they would have for the next five years.
"Healthy four-month-old female, normal growth and development, gaining appropriately but on the smallish side," say the notes of the intern who first examined Liliana on that day. February 3, 2000. The intern dismissed their fears about the bumps, but Alice persisted. A pediatrician, Dr. Paul Reed, agreed to order x-rays.
"I knew as soon as I saw Dr. Reed's face that something was terribly wrong, " Alice says. The x-rays showed that several of Liliana's ribs were broken. "These injuries are nonaccidental, " Dr. Reed told them. Someone has squeezed your baby, probably to make her stop crying, Alice recalls him saying. The doctors did more tests to check for other injuries. Alice began sobbing loudly. People in white coats peppered Miguel with questions. What had happened? Did he drink a lot? Get angry? Shake the baby? Miguel was shocked and speechless.
Because fractures stemming from compression injuries are often an indicator of child abuse, and noting Miguel's seeming lack of emotion, Dr. Reed considered this a typical case of paternal mistreatment. He gave his opinion to his supervisor, Dr. Barbara Craig, head of the Armed Forces Center for Child Protection.
"We were so young and naive, " Alice says now, ruefully. She was 20, Miguel, 28.
The radiologist reading the next round of x-rays said Liliana also had a broken wrist and possibly a broken leg. This report, later found to be inaccurate, further convinced doctors of abuse. Liliana was admitted to the pediatric unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for her protection, and another doctor examined her there. A summary of Lilana's exam relates the following: no swelling, no bruises, no cuts, no burns. No evidence of pain. Well-nourished. Growing well. Not withdrawn. Clean clothes, earrings, painted toenails, very clean and well kept. Smiling, feeding, alert. Both parents atteded all OB visits before the birth. Both parents brings her to clinic appointments.
The record also notes Alice mentioned bone problems in her family. Yet, medical experts would later testify, none of the many doctors at the Naval Medical Center or at Walter Reed recorded a thorough medical history, nor did they do a " differential diagnosis" to rule out what, besides abuse, could have caused Liliana's broken ribs. All other tests, including a brain scan were normal.
Well into the night, a doctor, two social workers from the Alexandria, Virginia, Child Protective Services, two Alexandria police detectives and a military police officer all questioned the Velasquezes. They asked open-ended questions like, " How do you think this might have happened? " The couple didn't comprehend the jeopardy they were in. During that interview and subsequent ones, they speculated and wondered aloud if it was possible they'd been to rough with the baby. In one session, Miguel told a social worker that he had messaged the baby's stomach when she was constipated. It was a folk treatment to his native San Salvador. His comment was heard in a very different way. What was written down was, "Father admitted to squeezing the baby. "
The next day, the couple say, a social worker told them that, in light of Liliana's injuries and the interviews, the baby was going to be put in foster care. If either of them made a scene, it would hurt their chances of getting her back. Alice began to cry but composed herself enough to write out the baby's schedule. Miguel filled the diaper bag while Alice nursed the baby one last time, and then they carried her to a car waiting in the snowy street. She buckled Liliana into a car seat, and the social worker closed the door. And Alice lost it. She sprinted after the car crying, " They took my baby! " Miguel ran after her to stop her, and they both crumpled onto the slush-covered sidewalk, weeping.
A series of emergency hearing took place over the next few days. Each time the Velasquezes appeared in court, friends, co-workers and members of their church came as character witnesses. Yet social workers did not interview any of them to ask what sort of parents the Velasquezes were.
A friend searched the Internet to find out what childhood diseases might result in broken bones. One condition jumped out: osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), "brittle bone disease". OI is caused by a defect in the production of collagen, the protein that holds bones together. A person with OI doesn't have enough or has poor quality collagen. In mild forms, a doctor looking at an x-ray can't always tell if the bones are right or not. Broken bones are often the first sign of the disease. " I've had parents tell me about breaking a baby's leg when they lifted them by the ankles to change a diaper, " says Heller An Shapiro, executive director of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. "We get calls about false accusations of abuse all the time, "
On February 15, Alice told Dr. Barbara Craig why she suspected OI, listing her own history of broken bones. She would later ask that Liliana be tested- but the infant never was. "Please test her! " Alice begged every doctor and social worker she encountered. " All I heard was, 'You're just making excuses for your husband. You'd better cooperate if you want your baby back,' " Alice says.
At their first emotional reunion with Liliana, in a visitors room at the Alexandria Social Services office, the Velasquezes noticed she was wearing the same clothes she'd worn when she was taken away the week before. " Maybe the foster mom washed them, " Alice said hopefully to her husband. But when they changed Liliana, they knew it wasn't so. Her undergarment was stained and smelled bad. Alice says the baby had a diaper rash so severe her bottom was bloody. The Alexandria police knew where and when the Velasquezes were seeing their baby. That's when they decided to arrest Miguel for felony child abuse.
This story was printed in the January 2007 issue of Reader's Digest by Salley Shannon..
" "Doctors said we'd abused our baby, Who would believe us? A Parent's WORST Nightmare"
The Pediatrics clinic at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland was jammed. Alice Velasquez, dressed in Army fatigues, passed four-month old Liliana to her husband, Miguel, so she could stretch and check the clock. They had been in a waiting room at National Naval Medical Center for over an hour and a half. Now Alice was late for duty at the Pentagon.
"Don't worry, honey, it won't be much longer, " Miguel told Alice. Then he kissed Liliana, and she began to coo. A few days before, Alice had found two little bumps over Liliana's left ribs. They felt bony, and bone problems ran in Alice's family. The couple decide to ask the doctor to do x-rays during the "well baby" visit.
Husband and wife were a study in contrasts: Alice, blonde, outgoing, excitable; Miguel, olive-skinned, quiet, placid. He kept her calm until their turn finally came. Alice took Liliana. Miguel grabbed the baby's diaper bag and toys, and they went to the exam room. It was the last moment of ordinary family routine they would have for the next five years.
"Healthy four-month-old female, normal growth and development, gaining appropriately but on the smallish side," say the notes of the intern who first examined Liliana on that day. February 3, 2000. The intern dismissed their fears about the bumps, but Alice persisted. A pediatrician, Dr. Paul Reed, agreed to order x-rays.
"I knew as soon as I saw Dr. Reed's face that something was terribly wrong, " Alice says. The x-rays showed that several of Liliana's ribs were broken. "These injuries are nonaccidental, " Dr. Reed told them. Someone has squeezed your baby, probably to make her stop crying, Alice recalls him saying. The doctors did more tests to check for other injuries. Alice began sobbing loudly. People in white coats peppered Miguel with questions. What had happened? Did he drink a lot? Get angry? Shake the baby? Miguel was shocked and speechless.
Because fractures stemming from compression injuries are often an indicator of child abuse, and noting Miguel's seeming lack of emotion, Dr. Reed considered this a typical case of paternal mistreatment. He gave his opinion to his supervisor, Dr. Barbara Craig, head of the Armed Forces Center for Child Protection.
"We were so young and naive, " Alice says now, ruefully. She was 20, Miguel, 28.
The radiologist reading the next round of x-rays said Liliana also had a broken wrist and possibly a broken leg. This report, later found to be inaccurate, further convinced doctors of abuse. Liliana was admitted to the pediatric unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for her protection, and another doctor examined her there. A summary of Lilana's exam relates the following: no swelling, no bruises, no cuts, no burns. No evidence of pain. Well-nourished. Growing well. Not withdrawn. Clean clothes, earrings, painted toenails, very clean and well kept. Smiling, feeding, alert. Both parents atteded all OB visits before the birth. Both parents brings her to clinic appointments.
The record also notes Alice mentioned bone problems in her family. Yet, medical experts would later testify, none of the many doctors at the Naval Medical Center or at Walter Reed recorded a thorough medical history, nor did they do a " differential diagnosis" to rule out what, besides abuse, could have caused Liliana's broken ribs. All other tests, including a brain scan were normal.
Well into the night, a doctor, two social workers from the Alexandria, Virginia, Child Protective Services, two Alexandria police detectives and a military police officer all questioned the Velasquezes. They asked open-ended questions like, " How do you think this might have happened? " The couple didn't comprehend the jeopardy they were in. During that interview and subsequent ones, they speculated and wondered aloud if it was possible they'd been to rough with the baby. In one session, Miguel told a social worker that he had messaged the baby's stomach when she was constipated. It was a folk treatment to his native San Salvador. His comment was heard in a very different way. What was written down was, "Father admitted to squeezing the baby. "
The next day, the couple say, a social worker told them that, in light of Liliana's injuries and the interviews, the baby was going to be put in foster care. If either of them made a scene, it would hurt their chances of getting her back. Alice began to cry but composed herself enough to write out the baby's schedule. Miguel filled the diaper bag while Alice nursed the baby one last time, and then they carried her to a car waiting in the snowy street. She buckled Liliana into a car seat, and the social worker closed the door. And Alice lost it. She sprinted after the car crying, " They took my baby! " Miguel ran after her to stop her, and they both crumpled onto the slush-covered sidewalk, weeping.
A series of emergency hearing took place over the next few days. Each time the Velasquezes appeared in court, friends, co-workers and members of their church came as character witnesses. Yet social workers did not interview any of them to ask what sort of parents the Velasquezes were.
A friend searched the Internet to find out what childhood diseases might result in broken bones. One condition jumped out: osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), "brittle bone disease". OI is caused by a defect in the production of collagen, the protein that holds bones together. A person with OI doesn't have enough or has poor quality collagen. In mild forms, a doctor looking at an x-ray can't always tell if the bones are right or not. Broken bones are often the first sign of the disease. " I've had parents tell me about breaking a baby's leg when they lifted them by the ankles to change a diaper, " says Heller An Shapiro, executive director of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. "We get calls about false accusations of abuse all the time, "
On February 15, Alice told Dr. Barbara Craig why she suspected OI, listing her own history of broken bones. She would later ask that Liliana be tested- but the infant never was. "Please test her! " Alice begged every doctor and social worker she encountered. " All I heard was, 'You're just making excuses for your husband. You'd better cooperate if you want your baby back,' " Alice says.
At their first emotional reunion with Liliana, in a visitors room at the Alexandria Social Services office, the Velasquezes noticed she was wearing the same clothes she'd worn when she was taken away the week before. " Maybe the foster mom washed them, " Alice said hopefully to her husband. But when they changed Liliana, they knew it wasn't so. Her undergarment was stained and smelled bad. Alice says the baby had a diaper rash so severe her bottom was bloody. The Alexandria police knew where and when the Velasquezes were seeing their baby. That's when they decided to arrest Miguel for felony child abuse.
this story is very touching... *speechless*
It's awful how the social services agencies and foster "parents" don't have any supervision or oversight.
This family had gone through a lot of balancing of emotions, losing their daughter over an error or a misunderstanding. I wish doctors wouldn't jump to conclusions too quick without more testing being done, instead of blaming the parents on abuse and bad parenting. I never like child social services, they've done a lot of errors, they should not suspected that there was an abuse going on, without hard evidences to back up their claim. Sometimes they don't even do enough searching or finding evidences. I felt so bad for that family, I wish I could give them all a hug for all that they went through.