RANA | TEXAS

“After undergoing IVF, my husband Chad and I were blessed with our daughter, Reagan, in 2007, followed by our twin daughters, Kambrey and Karrington, in May 2010.

On June 3, 2010, when the twins were 4 weeks old, we noticed something was wrong with one of Karrington’s legs during a diaper change. Karrington had her leg drawn up to her chest and screamed in pain when it was moved.

I’m a labor and delivery registered nurse and my husband is a firefighter and paramedic. We recognized this was not normal so we promptly called our pediatrician's office and brought Karrington in to be seen. Our pediatrician referred us to the children’s hospital to get X-rays of Karrington's leg.

At the children’s hospital, the attending physician showed us the X-rays and pointed to a blurry edge of the bone around Karrington’s ankle and said ‘its like chasing a red herring’ - meaning the fracture may or may not be there. They were not sure. So, they drew some blood and chatheterized my 4 week old baby for a urine sample. Then, the social worker came in and said they were going to have to notify CPS because there might be a fracture in our infant. My husband and I, as medical professionals ourselves, understood that they were obligated to report and were just doing their job-checking it off the list.

Then, we were informed that we were being transferred to the main campus of the children’s hospital to be evaluated by their trauma team. As soon as we rolled through the ambulance bay, we were treated as ‘those parents’. They were already talking about the ‘tib-fib’ fracture that had not been verified by a radiologist yet. We were interrogated by a CPS caseworker and were told that we had to bring in our other two children to be evaluated.

They proceeded to do full body scans (23 X-rays and a head CT scan) of both of our newborn babies and did a minimal head-to-toe assessment of our older daughter Reagan. They discovered multiple ‘fractures’ - blurry edges at the end of the bones around the knees and ankles on both of our twins.

It's such a horrific blur of memories. I was trying to breastfeed and pump and take care of my 3 children while still recovering from my c-section on top of trying to figure out what in the world was happening to my babies. How did they have fractures? There were no signs of bruising, no falls, no symptoms other than Karrington's one leg.

The next day, the child abuse pediatrician (CAP) came to Karrington's bedside. I had been racking my brain all night and morning between being interrogated by CPS and attempting to sleep. All I could think of was calcium and vitamin D issues, prematurity and brittle bone disease (osteogenesis imperfecta). The CAP dismissed their prematurity, said we did not have a family history of brittle bone disease, and the x-rays did not show signs of this disorder. He agreed to ‘check’ the concern for low calcium and vitamin D by doing a quick heel stick for calcium which came back normal. I was told since the calcium heel stick was normal that the vitamin D testing ‘wasn't warranted’. So- his medical opinion was that these fractures were due to non-accidental trauma....AKA child abuse. We were told that our 3 daughters were not allowed to be in our care and they were placed in kinship care with my parents.

We worked with our pediatrician to try to figure out the medical cause of their fractures because we with absolute certainly knew they were not abused. Though our pediatrician tried to get other specialists to evaluate our girls, there were some that would not get involved because ‘child abuse’ was on their charts.

Fast forward to November 2010. After working with our pediatrician, a geneticist, and a few other specialists- it was determined that our children have a genetic connective tissue disorder (later to be narrowed down to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) and suffered from vitamin D deficiency rickets. Their prematurity, EDS, and vitamin D deficiency rickets explained the ‘fractures’ seen in the X-rays which were actually signs of healing rickets. This was also confirmed by a pediatric orthopedist. After our experts’ testimony, the judge ordered our children returned to us and dismissed our case.

Our case was filed by CPS as ‘reason to believe abuse’ so we filed for an administrative review, which was unsuccessful. The problem was the review team included our accusing child abuse pediatrician… the same one whom refused to accept our daughters’ medical diagnoses. We then filed for an Office of Consumer Affairs review- which included a video demonstration by our geneticist at the twins' 18 month check up, along with court transcripts and other medical records. In December of 2012- we were informed that the findings were all ‘ruled out.’ After fighting for over 2 years, we were relieved it was finally over and off of our record... or so we thought.

In the summer of 2016, former Texas State Representative Cindy Burkett was canvassing our neighborhood for her reelection campaign and ended up on my doorstep. I normally don't answer the door when random people are knocking, but I am so thankful to God that I did that night. I took the opportunity to share with her the tragic details about what happened to my family with the hopes that she could somehow make a change for the better and as a result, she wrote HB2848 and HB2849 which would add better checks and balances for cases like ours.

Representative Burkett’s office was looking into our case for HB2848 and HB2849 and happened to find that all these years later, our names were still on the child abuse registry! After filing some additional paperwork, we finally received certified mail from CPS with the report that the findings had been ‘ruled out’ officially... though this was supposed to have been done back in 2012.

In 2017, my family testified in support of HB 2848 and HB 2849 and in 2021 we testified to help pass SB 1578 which became law in September 2021, giving Texas parents accused of abuse the right to a second medical opinion.

I also started a non-profit organization called Fractured Families with four other moms who have gone through the same journey. We have over 1,000 members from all throughout the US and the world and last year our organization celebrated its 10th anniversary of advocating for and protecting families wrongfully accused.

Children absolutely need protection from truly abusive situations, there is no argument there, but these types of cases can be handled better. In these cases, the child abuse pediatrician’s diagnosis is the only one bearing weight in the eyes of CPS. The burden then gets put on innocent families to prove their own innocence, all the while trying to figure out the correct medical diagnosis. We lived that. Because the accusing CAP ignored the medical diagnosis from four experts and wouldn’t change his mind about his own diagnosis, CPS wouldn’t drop our case. This resulted in more time separating our family and further traumatizing us in the process. I was not allowed to work as a nurse during our case and did not get paid while I was off from work. My nursing license and my husband's paramedic license were put in jeopardy due to these allegations and we had to file bankruptcy in May of 2016 due to the overwhelming debt we incurred due to this nightmare.

Checks and balances are very much needed in the world of child abuse pediatrics- as it’s usually whatever that one doctor says -goes. Innocent families’ lives are being unnecessarily destroyed in the process.

The truth is ALWAYS in the best interest of the child. The medical community needs to be invested in the truth, willing to seek expert opinions in determining a possible cause and be less hasty to diagnose child abuse.”