Legal change that needs to happen in Ontario to protect families against medical kidnapping:

Ontario needs to provide the caregivers of a SICK child falsely accused of causing a non-accidental injury the right to second expert medical opinions BEFORE legal apprehensions of the child by CAS (while the child can be taken into a safe space). Apprehensions of SICK children not only cause immense trauma to both children and caregivers but also prevents the parents from having access to the child’s medical records and imaging crucial for obtaining second medical opinions, having their child properly diagnosed and treated. It is a common practice by CAS to prevent parents from having access to their child’s medical records after apprehension.

Following the precedents from Texas and Arkansas, Ontario needs a legal change that would guarantee that parents of a child that presents with unexplained medical issues are provided with a chance to obtain a second medical opinion from a qualified expert outside of the accusing hospital before their child gets legally apprehended, which does not currently happen. At present, your child can be apprehended from you straight from the ER or doctor’s office before any extensive medical testing into conditions like vitamin D deficiency - infantile rickets, Osteogenesis imperfecta, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, strokes and other conditions that mimic child abuse, has even begun.

Once apprehension happens and Family and Children’s Services take over the decision-making, they cut parents from access to their child’s medical care and decision-making and access to their medical records and imaging necessary to obtain second opinions from experts who have no connection the accusing doctors contracted by Family and Children’s Services.

This legal change could in no way protect actual abusive parents but will give a fair chance to loving parents whose sick child presents with symptoms that are medical but have initially been misdiagnosed (usually by child advocacy doctors contracted by Family and Children’s Services) as results of abuse (without any signs of actual abuse on the child’s body, such as bruising, swelling, external bleedings etc).

This does not mean that protective measures are not put into place (the child is placed in a safe place until second opinions come in), but parents do not lose their legal right as parents and continue to have access and decision-making privileges in the ensuing legal battle.