DAWN | IOWA

"Our nightmare started three years ago this past January. My four kids were ages 11, 8, 5, and 2. My youngest son, Beau, was attending the same daycare his two older sisters had attended when they were younger. I worked nights as a nurse and was driving home when I got a call from the daycare. Beau had fallen at daycare and hit his head hard on a concrete wall while he was standing on a window seat.

While they were checking him over from the fall they noticed a bruise in his left ear. They called me to see if I knew where the bruise came from and I had no idea. They seemed ok with it and assured me he was fine from the fall they witnessed.

I went home and went to sleep and woke up to a call from DHS (CPS) saying I needed to call them right away. The social worker said he thought Beau could have a brain bleed (which was a stretch because he was observed by the school nurse throughout the day, showed no signs of having any serious injury, had acted fine, played normal, ate normal, and took his nap like usual). The social worker thought we should take him to the emergency room. He also asked to talk with my three older kids. He asked all of them if they had ever seen anyone hit my 2 year old and they all said no. In fact they even said no one even yells at them and they all felt safe at home.

At the hospital Beau was observed to be acting normal and his scans, a head CT, and full body x-ray were clean. No signs of abuse past or present. No concussion or anything. He was completely ok other than the bruise we could not explain. The emergency room doctor did not seem worried at all and my son was able to go home.

The next day when I got off work I went right to the daycare to speak with them. They apologized for calling DHS on us. They said “we have to call because we have gotten in trouble for not calling in the past.” I asked them to review all the video they had of him from the day before the bruise and the day they found it.

While I was at the daycare, DHS called my ex husband and said he had to bring our son to their doctor who was a specialist and she would tell us how the bruise happened. I was not allowed to attend this visit. Since we had nothing to hide we went along with what they requested. At this appointment they stripped my son naked, took pictures of his body, cut a big chunk of hair from his long locks for a drug test, and then sent him on his way. They literally found nothing on him. We later learned that even with no evidence of abuse from either doctor visit and even with my son acting completely normal, that this child abuse pediatrician determined that Beau’s bruise had to have been caused by abuse.

Later that day, we decided to get Beau checked out by our pediatrician who we had taken all our kids to since our oldest was born. We brought all of our children with us to this visit. We had established a good relationship with this doctor and he knew our kids very well. Not once did we have any issues or did he question anything about our parenting or their safety ever. He looked our son over, asked the older kids a few questions and said without a doubt he knew this was not abuse. He had been a pediatrician for years and has seen children who have been abused and nothing he saw with our son and family pointed to abuse.

While we were with the pediatrician, the daycare emailed me… they had found a video of our son being hit twice with a block in the exact ear in which this bruise was found! Not only was he hit twice, but he continued to rub and grab his ear for an extended period afterwards while he cried out in pain. We showed the video to the pediatrician and he was in agreeance that it could 100% be the cause of the bruised left ear.

That evening the social worker set up a meeting with me to make a safely plan and to watch the video. By this time I had a lawyer who would be joining me on the phone for this meeting. The social worker watched the video and then we wrote out a safety plan. The safety plan consisted of my kids not being able to be alone with me and that they would stay at their dad’s house. I could see them if I went to his house only while he was there. As a parent, you can imagine this broke my heart. My children were devastated. Imagine a child being taken away from their parent when they knew their parent did nothing wrong. Try explaining that to an 11, 8, and 5 year old why they cannot come home with you. Absolutely heartbreaking.

A few days later, the daycare wrote DHS and me a letter stating what had happened to Beau in their care and had they known of him being hurt in their care the previous day, they would not have called to report me. Had an incident report been properly filled out by the daycare at the time he was hurt, they would’ve had documentation for the bruise and DHS would have never been called.

That night the social worker called and informed my lawyer that even with the older kids' testimony and the letter from the daycare, they felt it was not safe for my kids to be home with me. Another devastating blow to my family for absolutely no reason. To review, we have one bruise in question. That is all. We have our pediatrician on our side saying it was not abuse. We have three older kids saying there was no abuse. We have a video of him getting hit by another child at daycare in the exact spot the only bruise in question was. We have the daycare admitting to their mistake which caused this.

Why was all of that not enough to end our case? All because the child abuse pediatrician refused to admit she was wrong and insisted that it HAD to be an ADULT who hit Beau’s ear. She refused to even speak to my pediatrician. He attempted multiple times to speak with her and she flat out refused to come to the phone or to meet with him.

After another week of DHS dragging their feet and a lot of back and forth with my lawyer, we offered that on my weeks with the kids I would happily take my son to the doctor to get checked out so that they would have reassurance he was ok so that we could end the safety plan. They agreed and I picked my kids up right away. I did exactly what I told them I would do, but ironically they never checked up on my son ever again. Not a phone call or email or text message. They never once asked to see the summaries from the doctors visits after I had him. Nothing. I find that weird since they seemed so worried, but that only proves that they were not concerned about my son’s wellbeing. He was just a number to them, and once they realized they would not be making money off of him like they do with so many other children and that we had the means to stand up for ourselves, they backed off.

It doesn’t end there though. Weeks later we got their final report that stated “FOUNDED CHILD ABUSE, unknown perpetrator”. Funny because the video proves who did it… but it didn’t matter because their CHILD ABUSE PEDIATRICIAN said it was abuse. We tried to appeal, but since we were not named specifically as the abusers we could not appeal.

Even though it has been three years, the unnecessary trauma my family went through still affects us. My children knew I had done nothing wrong and they still got taken away from me so they had the constant fear that they would be taken away again. We have since moved far away from where we used to live and are moving on with our lives."