ANNIE | WASHINGTON

“After 5 years of infertility and two miscarriages, my husband Abram and I welcomed our daughter, Winona, in August 2023. She was absolute perfection. We were so proud and couldn’t wait to watch her grow and flourish.

In October 2023, when Winona was 5 weeks old, all three of us got sick. Winona was miserable. She was having trouble sleeping due to the congestion and she was coughing so much that she had red dots on her face. She had also popped a blood vessel in her eye. I was concerned about her breathing and these other symptoms so I scheduled an appointment with her pediatrician.

Before heading to the pediatrician, I also noticed a bruise had formed above Winona’s right eyebrow. The day before, my mother-in-law had been feeding Winona and held her up to burp when Winona’s head fell forward and hit her grandma’s mouth, causing her lip to bleed, but Winona hadn’t cried so my mother-in-law didn’t think much of it. Now there was a bruise where they had bonked heads so I figured I’d have the pediatrician take a look at it as well while we were there.

Our pediatrician examined Winona. There was a whole combination of issues happening with Winona’s skin. In addition to the red spots on her face and the bruise from hitting heads with grandma, she had a thin red line from the piping/seam of the ‘arms up’ style swaddle we had been using. The line went from under her arm pit and followed down along the back of her arm. Due to all of these issues going on with Winona’s skin, the pediatrician noted in the records, ‘I am concerned about low platelets which is likely from the underlying viral infection’ so she sent us to the children’s hospital for more testing.

This is where things took a turn. The bruising and other strange skin issues prompted them to do a full child abuse work-up. To our shock, they told us Winona had a skull fracture. We were interviewed by a child abuse pediatrician (CAP) and explained that Winona had bumped heads with her grandma the day before. We were told that couldn’t have caused the fracture and we agreed it shouldn’t have been enough to cause a fracture, but we couldn’t figure out how else she could’ve gotten it and knew she wasn’t abused. No one would believe us. A pediatric ophthalmologist did an eye exam and determined Winona didn’t have any retinal hemorrhages. X-rays showed no other issues other than the apparent skull fracture.

We were reported to CPS and law enforcement and were put on a safety plan stating Winona had to live with her grandparents and could not be unsupervised with us. We had to undergo interviews and an examination of our home, which the caseworker told investigators was ‘amazing, clean, and with a good safe sleeping area.’ My mother-in-law was at the hospital and offered to show doctors and investigators her lip from the day before when she had bumped heads with Winona to corroborate what we had told them about where the bruise came from.

While Winona was still in the hospital, a pediatric neurosurgeon reviewed her imaging and told us that he didn’t believe there was actually a fracture after all. The CAP disagreed, but after two days of being under a hospital hold, they rescanned Winona’s head and sure enough, there was never even a fracture.

Once CPS verified with the hospital that there was never in fact a fracture to begin with, CPS updated their safety plan so we could have Winona back in our home unsupervised, but we were required to follow all medical recommendations and would have weekly unannounced visits from CPS and from all four of Winona’s grandparents to check in on us.

Law enforcement dropped their case completely. The detective on our case documented that our pediatrician along with another doctor at the hospital, weren’t concerned about Winona’s petechia (the red dots on her face) as it is fairly normal in babies and can be caused from coughing and sneezing, which would make sense with Winona being sick. The detective also spoke with the CAP, confirming with her that there was NOT a fracture.

Although everyone was now on the same page that there was no fracture, the CAP asserted that Winona still had bruising down her arm pointing to this being abuse. In her report, the detective said she pointed out to the CAP how the line on Winona’s arm didn’t look like a typical bruise as the line was ‘thin, red, and stringy’ and appeared to match up to the seams of the swaddle. The report notes the CAP said, ‘IF they line up with the seams then someone was carrying the baby by the arm.’ The detective said she tried to ask the CAP about other possible causes such as sensitive skin or allergic reactions, but documented that the CAP was ‘resolute in her opinion’ of abuse.

We filed a grievance with the hospital regarding the misdiagnosis and the CAP’s inability to change her opinion once the fracture was disproven.

CPS told us that as long as our normal pediatrician determined Winona was well and had no new injuries, they would drop the case and send us unfounded letters. However, the CAP accessed my daughter’s medical chart after we filed the grievance and called her pediatrician before our appointment, telling her that we were abusing our daughter and our pediatrician had to make us do a follow up skeletal survey. Our doctor said she had to default to the CAP’s opinion.

We did the follow up skeletal survey and of course it was completely clear of any fractures. But the CAP still wrote up a report stating Winona was being abused regardless of the lack of injuries. Since CPS is contracted with the CAP, they told us they are unable to drop our case because the CAP says it’s abuse.

Nearly four months have passed now and we’ve been in court for weeks. We got a second opinion expert for the shelter care hearings, but the judge determined the CAP to be ‘more credible’. The state’s attorney claimed in his closing statement that my husband and I avoided criminal charges due to our ‘privilege.’ We start the fact finding trial later this month and to say we’re horrified at the whole situation is an understatement.

We fought for five years to bring home a child. Ironically, Abram and I had also been licensed foster parents in the years prior to having Winona. I personally went through extremely invasive medical treatments just for the chance of having a healthy baby. We got exactly 5 weeks with our miracle daughter before our lives flipped completely upside down.”