Our ALEC Model Reins in Child Abuse Pediatricians
It is perhaps the most vulnerable time in the life of any family: when a parent has to take their minor child to the Emergency Department for medical care. A child is in pain, and their loving parent will do nearly anything to make that pain go away and stay away.
Yet, hidden among the doctors who are gathered to diagnose the child’s condition and bring immediate pain relief and hopefully a long-term treatment solution is a child abuse pediatrician, whose primary purpose is to gather forensic evidence to prosecute parents for child abuse or neglect. A parent will hypothesize and even brainstorm what might have happened to their child, anything to help the doctors find a solution, completely unaware that they are in a forensic interrogation and that anything they say can—and will—be used against them in a court of law.
It’s a blatant violation of their Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate themselves. It’s also wholly unreliable, as this kind of speculation may have a parent suggest a possible cause for their child’s injury that by no means reflects reality, nor indicates that the parent has committed any crime. On the other hand, if a parent can’t offer any explanation for how their child’s injury occurred, that itself is taken as a confession of guilt and negligence.
It’s a scenario in which innocent parents simply cannot win.
Which is why I took to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Conference in Denver two weeks ago a model bill that will rein in these doctors and limit the harm they can cause.
But we need your partnership to continue this important work. More on that in a minute.
The 2023 Netflix documentary, Take Care of Maya, shows the real-life story of the Kowalskis in St. Petersburg, Florida, and just how bad these investigations can sometimes get.
Ten-year-old Maya had been diagnosed with a rare but documented condition known as complex regional pain disorder. The only treatment, according to her specialist doctors, is a drug called ketamine, and that in heavy doses. When Maya ended up in the Emergency Department of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital with an especially bad episode, her parents told the doctors there about her diagnosis and the proper treatment.
Instead, ignorant of the protocol and alarmed by the high dosage called for, a child abuse pediatrician called in the local child welfare agency and had Maya removed from her parents’ care and her parents removed from the hospital.
For weeks Maya’s ordeal dragged on, while those who knew and loved her, who knew how to stop her pain, were shoved aside on the word of a single doctor, trained only to spot abuse.
Finally, Maya’s mother Beata reached a profound conclusion: If Maya couldn’t come home because Beata was accused of abusing her, then Beata would remove herself from the equation. Thinking to save her little girl’s life, a desperate Beata took her own.
Maya was returned home, and ultimately the truth came out. Her parents were both exonerated, though for Beata that would be too late. The family sued the hospital and in January of this year a jury awarded them more than two-hundred million dollars in damages.
This is the kind of destruction that can be wrought by one physician. The problem with having a specialty in child abuse is that sometimes, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Meanwhile, the courts treat these doctors not only as specialists, but often as the only specialists the court will hear.
In documented cases, family courts have sided with a single child abuse pediatrician testifying that a brain bleed can only be caused by abuse, even as multiple hematologists and neurologists testify that they see them all the time as a result of certain congenital conditions and blood disorders. Likewise, it is insisted certain fractures “must be caused by abuse” when it turns out a child has a brittle bone disease.
And the courts side with the child abuse pediatrician over the osteopath or orthopedist ready to tell the court, “We found the medical cause, and it is not the parents.”
Our model ALEC bill seeks to bring the child abuse pediatrics specialty into a proper balance within our family court system.
A single doctor should not have the authority to violate longstanding constitutional rights, nor to destroy a family over an unchecked opinion.
So, our model bill does three things to restore balance:
First, it requires child abuse pediatricians—or any medical professional, for that matter—to respect the parent’s Fifth Amendment and Miranda rights by identifying themselves and their role in the investigation and seeking the parent’s express permission for their conversation (or interrogation) to take place.
Second, it requires the courts to consider the potentially exculpatory testimony of doctors in related specialties other than child abuse pediatrics to provide balance in the medical evidence before the court.
And finally, it guarantees that a single child abuse pediatrician will not be the only voice available to the court, by requiring the investigating agency to enlist the services of a second medical expert if their primary medical expert is the one to make the hotline call that launches the investigation. It does not keep any doctor from making a call they believe is necessary, so it will not put any child in danger of their abuse being ignored. But it does require the agency to bring in another doctor to check their work.
These are commonsense safeguards in an area of family law tragically lacking common sense in its practice today. And through our model bill at ALEC, we can bring these safeguards to states around the country.
You see, many members of ALEC are state lawmakers who come to ALEC to find bills like ours that they can take back and introduce in their states.
What I shared at ALEC in July you may find in your state legislature come January.
Our website at ParentalRightsFoundation.org already features models from past years, including bills to protect fundamental parental rights, to safeguard due process before a name goes on a child abuse registry, or to replace anonymous child abuse hotline calls with confidential ones so that the System knows who called. And states have already taken some of these models and run with them.
We have you to thank for that.
Your investment in our organization pays for our presence at ALEC, the time and expertise to draft and edit these models, and our partnership with state lawmakers in championing these bills in their states.
And your investment today will enable us to add this new model to those on our site, and to those being enacted in states around the country.
Because no parent should ever be made to feel that the only way to end her child’s suffering is to take her own life.
Beata knew the treatment her daughter needed. She knew how to end her daughter’s pain. But on the word of a single child abuse pediatrician, the courts and the hospital simply refused to listen.
Our model will change that, by requiring the courts to hear and consider the “second opinion” secured by the parents. In the case of Maya Kowalski, that means her pain management specialist would have been able to testify that the treatment Beata asked for was actually called for and effective.
Maya would have been cared for, and Beata would still be alive today.
We can’t bring Beata Kowalski back. But we can keep other parents from ever feeling so desperate.
So, will you stand with us today? Will you invest your generous gift of $10, $25, or even $125 in the work of bringing this and other models to states around the country to defend innocent parents and the children they care for?
Together we can limit the damage currently caused by unchecked child abuse pediatricians and give innocent families the tools they need to be heard and have their rights preserved—and their children saved!
Thank you for standing with us today.
Sincerely,
Michael T. Ramey
President
P.S. — Taking a model bill to ALEC is expensive, especially in this economy. But it will be well worth it if just one state takes up our model, and if just one family is spared the pain that Maya and her family faced. And it won’t be just one state or just one family, but many. Will you give generously today to help defray the cost of my trip and empower our campaign to protect parental rights in state legislatures in the coming year?