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 very 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's
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, re****ts and hard****ps all
designed to discredit you, knock you off balance and seize custody of
your child. It may sound too fantastic to be true, but after learning
about the credibility of the parents involved and their high ranking
positions they enjoyed teaching 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 of
experience. The hospital perceived the parents as helpless, homeless
people, having just landed back in the States after being overseas for
eight years. This perception only contributed to the hospitals
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 involved and the available evidence to prove malice should be
sufficient to prosecute 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 has
become 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 child welfare 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 money - 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 within the walls of the hospital with no one to challenge
them. A transfer to a new facility would expose the hospital and
medical staff for the errors they committed - thus exposing them to
possible civil and criminal litigation.
Parents are rarely ever aware of what is actually happening 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 re****t was in fact an honest
mistake. In the rare cases when parents become aware of the potential
false re****ting, proving malice, with hard factual evidence, is close
to impossible.
The benchmark set to prove a false child abuse re****t 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, 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 re****t is actually filed. For every one
case that surfaces, thousands may remain unexposed.
Our goal is not to lower the bar for proving malice, but in the few
rare cases where malice can actually be proved, 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 re****ting agents outside the medical profession including
teachers, clergy and other professionals who come in contact with
children are required to re****t and enjoy the same privilege when
re****ting. 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
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 re****t 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 opiate drugs, while
accepting them when needed, was well do***ented and clearly understood
by the majority of the medical staff, including the social worker (in
the opinion of the parents), who phoned in the re****t. If she did not
know, she certainly had a responsibility to have found out or at the
very least questioned the parents. While current re****ting laws do not
require evidence of wrong doing to file a re****t, only a suspicion,
the available evidence proving malice is substantial and will
certainly show a conspiracy to discredit these parents for selfish
purposes and financial gain - so believe the parents based on the
evidence they already posses.
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 re****t
filed by someone at the hospital alleging domestic violence, as well
as two false security re****ts. Additionally, the parents com****t 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, in the opinion of the parents. This diagnosis lead
to the drug Haldol, a psychotropic medication, being prescribed
(illegal in England), a condition or diagnosis 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.
"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 re****ts in an
attempt to remove the loving sup****t 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 sup****t and loving care only they could provide".
References: http://www.brokenearth.org/legalfund
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