A mother's battle to be believed, After diagnosis, woman fights doctorsand DSS for daughter

A mother's battle to be believed
After diagnosis, woman fights doctors and DSS for daughter

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff | November 4, 2007

http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...o_be_believed/

Diana Owen had not slept in days when the hospital staff summoned her to
a meeting down the hall from her baby's room.

Four-month-old Bryanna-Rose had spent more than a week in Hasbro
Children's Hospital in Providence for tests and observation. Owen had
told doctors her daughter's projectile vomiting was getting worse, the
contents of her stomach drenching her mother's clothes. While sleeping,
the mother had said, the child sometimes skipped breaths. Owen worried
that her only child might die of an undiagnosed condition.

But some doctors and nurses had dismissed her as a jittery first-time
mother, she recalled. One nurse had rolled her eyes when Owen worried
aloud, she said. Owen had responded angrily, telling some staff she used
to work as a health aide and was not overreacting.

"I do not have New Mom Syndrome!" she once snapped.

As the 38-year-old mother from Fall River walked into the meeting room
on June 26, 2006, Owen noticed all eyes on her.

A half-dozen people, seated in a lounge area, announced their
conclusions: Bryanna-Rose had no symptoms if her mother was out of the
room. The child would remain in the hospital without Owen present. The
baby would be placed into the protective custody of the Massachusetts
Department of Social Services.

Owen came to the chilling realization that she was being accused of
making up - or even intentionally causing - her daughter's ailments.
From her healthcare background, she had heard of the diagnosis the
doctors pinned on her: Munchausen by Proxy, a rare mental disorder in
which caretakers fabricate or induce illnesses in their children to gain
attention from doctors.

She could not believe it. She knew some medical staff had seen her
daughter's symptoms - and taken notes. Through sobs, she pleaded, "You
can't take my baby!"

Owen was escorted by security out of the hospital. As she left, she kept
telling herself: I will get my baby back.

This marked the start of one mother's odyssey to prove her sanity, a
task that would require painstaking persistence as authorities clung to
their original judgment of her. It is a case where hunches about Owen's
mental state rapidly escalated into near-certain conclusions, and
contradictory evidence was ignored, medical records show. On multiple
occasions, hospital staff recorded seeing the very symptoms that Owen
was accused of fabricating, yet they continued to disbelieve her.

In the coming months, even when three mental health specialists would
question the agency's assumptions about her, DSS would maintain its view
that Owen was unfit to be alone with her child.

Hasbro and DSS officials defended their actions against Owen, saying
they had a duty to protect a baby from a mother whose repeated false
reporting about symptoms triggered unnecessary testing.

At the center is a loosely defined and disputed disorder. Some
psychologists say Munchausen by Proxy is an underdiagnosed condition
with serious, sometimes deadly, consequences. Typically, mothers are
accused, their drive for attention so intense that some even poison
their children. Many of these mothers have backgrounds in medicine,
helping them fool doctors.

Other psychologists say the disorder - named after an 18th-century
German baron who exaggerated his military exploits - is overdiagnosed
and applied to mothers who simply clash with their doctors over the
seriousness of their child's condition.

Eric Mart, a New Hampshire psychologist, has testified nationwide in
defense of mothers accused of this disorder: "All you have sometimes is
an overanxious Mom," he said.

A happy addition

Owen calls Bryanna-Rose her "miracle baby," conceived after she and her
husband, Robert, assumed they would be childless. Owen suffered from
polycystic ovarian syndrome, which often causes infertility. But after
ovarian surgery a few years ago, Owen happily learned she was pregnant.
On Feb. 16, 2006, she delivered a healthy baby in Orlando, Fla.

Owen had yearned for her own happy family. The youngest of 10 children,
she has many bitter memories of growing up in a working-class family in
Fall River. She remembers being sexually abused by a relative. In her
20s and having barely graduated high school, she supported herself
through low-wage jobs. Her first marriage ended in divorce, and she was
twice treated for depression. Marrying Robert, and having a baby with
him, seemed too good to be true.

The euphoria over Bryanna-Rose's birth soon gave way to alarm over her
frequent vomiting, with the baby's lips sometimes turning blue. She also
seemed to skip breaths while sleeping. But doctors ruled out anything
serious. In May 2006, with her husband busy finishing school to become a
marine technician, Owen left him in Orlando to show off their daughter
to relatives.

In Fall River, Owen's concerns about her baby grew. Twice, Owen and
family members took the baby to the emergency room of nearby hospitals.
Doctors said the baby had gastroesophageal reflux, a relatively harmless
condition that she probably would outgrow. They suggested nonmilk
formulas to reduce the vomiting and ordered follow-up tests, which came
back normal.

On June 16, after Bryanna-Rose had an intense bout of vomiting, Owen's
older sister suggested they drive to Hasbro's emergency room.
Bryanna-Rose was admitted for yet more tests.

Early on, staff at least once witnessed projectile vomiting, and on
another occasion blueness, or cyanosis, around the lips, according to
medical records that Owen provided to the Globe.

On June 22, a nursing student also observed an episode of the baby "not
breathing with eyes becoming red and becoming blue around the lips,"
though the student noted no troubling drop in blood oxygen levels.

Despite those notations, the medical staff on that same day began to
raise concerns about Owen's mental state. Owen had reported that her
daughter's eyes had become fixed for about a minute, prompting a
neurological examination that found no serious problem. The three-page
report on the exam ended with the suggestion that the problem might be
with Owen: "(?) Munchausen by Proxy," it said.

The next day, Owen was asked to undergo a psychological evaluation. The
staff member who questioned her said the mother presented an
"inconsistent and fantastic history," including recounting heroic roles
in aiding foster children and giving conflicting dates for past events.

Over the next few days, Owen was alternately open, then suspicious. At
times, she angrily demanded to know why staff questioned her
credibility, once telling a nurse she thought a skeptical doctor was an
"ass." She initially concealed her past treatment for depression.

"Everyone is asking me a lot of weird questions," Owen told a nurse,
according to the records.

Allegations of abuse

In fact, the hospital's child-protection program had opened a file on
Owen, and on June 26, just hours before Owen would be escorted away, the
staff filed a suspected case of "medical child abuse" with DSS. Of the
700 cases the hospital refers to state authorities each year, about 10
are related to Munchausen by Proxy.

Dr. Carole Jenny, director of Hasbro's child-protection program, said
hospital staff treated Owen with respect, but over time, "we had reasons
to believe we couldn't trust her."

Owen came under scrutiny when, on numerous occasions, she reported her
baby having symptoms that "no one else" observed, said Jenny, who agreed
to a Globe interview with Owen's consent. When told about records
confirming some of the baby's symptoms, Jenny said they were considered
"clinically insignificant."

Hospital staff also examined the baby's prior medical records, and
concluded that a healthy baby was becoming the victim of many
unnecessary tests.

After Owen left the hospital, however, Bryanna-Rose remained for 10 more
days and continued to have symptoms, according to records. Hasbro staff
recorded vomiting or mouthfuls of spit-up about a dozen times, as well
as several occasions when they noticed the girl's lips were blue.

Yet the hospital's discharge summary for the baby said that, apart from
what the mother reported, "no other episodes of apnea or vomiting were
documented during her stay in the hospital."

On July 6, 2006, Bryanna-Rose was released from the hospital into the
home of a foster mother.

Foster care stay

Staying with her sister, Owen was inconsolable. She kept replaying the
day when she left the hospital without her daughter.

"It was the emptiest feeling I've ever had," she recalled.

The baby's stay in foster care, however, would prove a pivotal event.
Days after being with Bryanna-Rose, the foster mother called DSS: "It's
not the mother! This baby does have projectile vomiting!" she said,
according to a psychiatrist's report.

Owen hoped the foster mother's observation would mean DSS would drop the
case. Instead, two weeks after placing Bryanna-Rose in foster care, DSS
released the baby into the joint physical custody of the father, who had
abruptly quit his schooling in Florida to return to Fall River, and
Owen's sister. The agency insisted that, at all times, one of them had
to supervise Owen if she was with the baby.

Humiliating as this was to Owen, she was ecstatic to be living with
Bryanna-Rose again. Still, with the family needing income, Owen assumed
the role of breadwinner, piecing together part-time jobs as a health
aide and a retail clerk while her husband cared for their daughter. Her
sister's two-bedroom condominium became their cramped home.

DSS required Owen to undergo a psychological examination to gauge
whether she was a fit mother, and in late summer, a psychologist
interviewed her and found no basis to conclude she had Munchausen by
Proxy. He noted, among other reasons, that most mothers with this
disorder seek the medical staff's approval for their conscientiousness,
while Owen had "alienated" many of them. Still, he advised DSS to get
another opinion.

As the autumn leaves fell, the couple traveled with Bryanna-Rose to
Arlington to see Dr. Lee Birk, a psychiatrist and associate professor at
Harvard Medical School. Owen wore her best pair of black slacks and a
brown shirt, hoping to impress Birk, who had warned her by phone that if
he believed she abused her child, he would be her worst enemy in court.

Not long after entering Birk's corner office, the couple found
themselves in a familiar scene: Bryanna-Rose threw up on the office
floor. Birk watched the couple clean up after their daughter, impressed
at how they "did not panic" and seemed to lovingly care for her, he
recalled. After the visit, Birk interviewed Owen alone, talked to
relatives, and reviewed DSS documents. The more he learned, he said in
an interview, the more he thought the child abuse allegation "was
ridiculous."

He concluded that Owen's belligerence was triggered when she felt
disrespected but that she did not have Munchausen by Proxy. He noted
that a Boston sleep specialist this year confirmed that Bryanna-Rose
skipped breaths in her sleep, and though it was not serious, that her
parents were right to be concerned.

Birk said authorities got an idea about Owen, and refused to let go.

"They weren't interested in finding the truth," he said.

Psychological testing

Last November, Owen saw a neuropsychologist, who concluded that her
reasoning and communication skills fell in the "lower half of the
average range" but that she had no significant limitations. Owen and her
husband were hopeful that DSS would finally accept that she was a fit
parent. But instead, the agency ordered Owen to sit through another
psychological exam, by a Harvard specialist on Munchausen by Proxy.

On April 26, 2007, Owen's lawyer, James Harrington, fired off an angry
letter to DSS.

He called its actions "truly shameful," and urged officials to get out
of Owen's life instead of requesting "repeated evaluations until it gets
an opinion that meets its interpretation of the facts."

The letter appears to have swayed DSS. On May 25, the agency dropped the
supervision requirement, allowing Owen to be alone with Bryanna-Rose for
the first time in 11 months, though DSS waited another four months to
ask a judge to dismiss the case.

Although DSS believed its involvement with Owen's family had been
appropriate, the agency "doesn't want to stay in people's lives
forever," a spokesman said in an interview last month.

On Sept. 24, a juvenile court judge restored full custody of
Bryanna-Rose to her parents. Sitting on a bench, Owen wept in relief.

The family plans to return to Florida, where Owen's husband hopes to
resume his schooling and find a job in the boating industry. They have
dozens of bills to pay, including thousands of dollars in medical costs
not picked up by Medicaid.

As Owen watches over Bryanna-Rose, now an energetic and thriving
20-month-old, she remains bitter.

"It is myself and my family that will face the consequences of this
nightmare," she said. "They did not treat my child or myself with dignity."

Patricia Wen can be reached at .






CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA
WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.


CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...