Posts Tagged: Medical Misdiagnosis

March 26, 2019 was a day I’ll never forget.

Early that morning, I got a phone call from my sister that our mom was put on life support.

I was a block away at a different hospital dealing with another emergency. A CT scan confirmed that Miles had a potential fracture in his wrist as well as a broken leg. I felt heartbroken and confused.

I couldn’t accompany him to his X-ray or visit my mother. Instead, I had to meet with an abuse doctor and Special Victims Unit detectives.

A week after the X-ray, we had a Child Safety Conference with ACS. Everything neutral was made into a negative.

Around the same time, there was a story in the news about a white actress, Jenny Mollen. She had dropped her son and he fractured his skull. She talked openly about how hard it was for her as a mother and that she was so thankful for the hospital staff. They didn’t question her motives.

Our babies were both hurt unintentionally – but we were treated very differently.

In When the Misdiagnosis Is Child Abuse, published in The Atlantic and The Marshall Project, journalist Stephanie Clifford reported about child abuse pediatricians — doctors who are trained to determine whether kids’ injuries are accidental or inflicted. In most cases, these conclusions can’t be made with certainty — but the child welfare system often takes them as fact. As Clifford documented, this has resulted in the unnecessary separation of families, incarceration of parents who have not harmed their children and trauma for both children and parents.

Here, Clifford discusses her reporting process and what she learned from parents, as well as the role of power dynamics, racism and classism in these situations. She shares recommendations for change and for how parents can protect themselves from a false accusation.