After Wrongful Diagnosis, Texas CPS Took This Baby Away
Last year, on Christmas Eve, Jacqueline Morales Boatright gave birth to a daughter, Evelyn. It was a traumatic experience; Jacqueline had an emergency C-section, and Evelyn was born with bruises and swelling. But the baby pulled through, and Jacqueline and her husband Juan took Evelyn back to their Fort Worth, Texas, home.
Unfortunately, the Boatrights returned to the hospital—a different one—six weeks later, after baby Evelyn developed some strange twitches and started to vomit. The worried parents brought her to the emergency room at Cook Children’s Medical Center. Doctors examined Evelyn and took her for testing. Significantly, they noted in her record that she bore no signs of abuse or neglect.
The hospital ordered an MRI and an X-ray. The MRI came back with signs of small brain bleeding, and the X-ray showed an old partial rib fracture that was mostly healed. This led the radiologist to immediately classify Evelyn as a suspected victim of child abuse, even though her injuries were well explained by the circumstances of her birth.
“It seems [the radiologist] never even inquired about the circumstances of her birth or other possible explanations,” Jeremy Newman, vice president at the Family Freedom Project (FFP), which became invovled in the case, tells Reason.
Instead, the state’s child protective services agency, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), ordered the parents to leave the hospital and placed the baby in foster care.
“It took two minutes, 120 seconds, for someone who never met me to determine I can’t take care of my daughter,” said Juan
Article from Reason.com
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