| Nurse's mistakes may mean child abusers were wrongly convicted

On Sat, 15 May 2004 03:04:32 GMT, "Horner, Daniel Vernon"
wrote:

how could you say something like that.

I don't think you got the point.

I personaly am a abused child in
which my abuser was never proscuted due to "neglegent treatment of
the
evidence by the hospital staff".

Yes. Two things would be the most obvious reasons for that error.
Either they made an honest mistake, no malice intended on their part,
or they made an honest mistake because they were overtaxed and lacking
adequate resources. That is often the case with "negligence."

And yet still i would not awant a
false positive.

I fail to see how you can draw that conclusion: that LaVonne would
"want" false positives in the interests of reducing child abuse.

Let's come up with a better system that can make
apporpriate determinations as to who is abused and who is not.

Ah, and THAT gets to the crux. She, LaVonne, is ASKING FOR THAT.

Her opposing poster is an advocate of severely crippling or destroying
CPS and allowing parents to abuse their children until great enough
harm is done to be clearly "abuse." No preventive interventions
allowed.

LaVonne simply is realistic. There will always be some error. It is
the human condition. Some false positives will always occur. Making
them NOT occur at all would require NO examinations.

In other words, rather than improve the odds of NOT getting false
positives, the other poster wants LESS RESOURCES to do examinations.
Less money, hence less personnel, less training, less time.

You need to read the ng that The Plant called fern comes from most of
the time. It's packed with a bunch of folks that are very like, or in
support of, those that abused you.

They offer help to get them off and to let them do it MORE.

Have a gander. alt.support.child-protective-services.

Kane


--
Daniel Vernon Horner
555 N. Cypress St.
Orange, CA 92867
Cell Phone: 949-254-0633
Nextel Direct Connect: 122*58*60405

http://d.horner.home.att.net/


Carlson LaVonne wrote:

So, your point is what? Nurses make mistakes? Children are
sometimes
mistakenly identified as abused?

Improve the system. Vote for more taxes which would allow children
to
receive better advocacy.

People make mistakes. Are you willing to allow children to be
abused
because an underfunded system makes mistakes?

Guess what. I'll go for false positives any day. Do you even know
what
that means, billyf?

LaVonne

billyf wrote:

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/042...cal_nurse.html

By Laura Whitley
ABC13 Eyewitness News
(4/20/04 - HOUSTON) - Wrongly convicted -- that may be the case
for
dozens
of child abuse defendants. Potential problems were found in nearly
200
cases, and human error may be to blame.

Prosecutors rely on evidence as gathered at the Children's
Assessment
Center
to make strong cases. But now some of that evidence is being
questioned.

It's known as a safe haven for sexually abused children. But
Harris
County
District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal wants medical assessments of
potential
victims made by a nurse at the center's clinic reviewed.

"About 170 or so resulted in criminal charges being filed," said
Rosenthal.
"So we then asked for a peer review in all of those cases."

Robin Howard of the Children's Assessment Center said, "We are
very
concerned about what is going on here. And we're certainly here to
provide
any information we can."

The problem was discovered when the DA's office asked a doctor to
review the
nurse's findings while preparing a case for trial back in January.

Rosenthal said, "The doctor came back and said, 'I can't testify
to those
facts. I think she made a mistake.' So that caused them to then go
ahead and
check some more of her findings to see if there were, in fact,
potential
errors that were spotted."

According to internal Assessment Center emails, more problems were
found. A
memo from a clinic doctor in February said, "I have come across
another of
_______'s charts that contains flaws that could potentially have
repercussions."

Howard explained, "She is not an employee of the Children's
Assessment
Center. She was an employee of the University of Texas, who we
contract with
to provide medical services."

The nurse worked in the clinic at the Children's Assessment Center
for
about
two years. In that time she handled hundreds of examinations.

Even though the nurse worked for UT, the spokesperson would only
say the
university is still gathering information.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys are scrambling to figure out if any
of their
clients could be affected.

The nurse stopped working at the clinic in November. And that's
when
administration officials at CAC say they first became aware of the
problem.
(Copyright © 2004, KTRK-TV)