Dealing with Child advocacy doctors/accusing doctors

“As with all aspects of medicine, there are always financial considerations. First and foremost, like a hammer in need of nails, child abuse pediatricians need to find abuse in order to remain employed.”

(Maloney, Beth Alison, J.D.: Protecting Your Child from the Child Protection System, p.70)

Where to turn first in case you are wrongfully accused of child abuse in Ontario after a medical misdiagnosis of your child by a Child advocacy doctor.

Remember, you are not alone.

If you have any questions, contact us. We are a group of parents who went through the hell of medical misdiagnosis by a CAAP doctor at McMaster, Sick Kids and in London hospital and having their children kidnapped by Children’s Aid Society cooperating with those hospitals . We know what you are going through. We will try to help you in your fight for justice.

Watch Dubious Diagnosis on W5, CTV. It’s two stories of families falsely accused of child abuse in Ontario (both from our group) and one in the USA.

• Immediately request your child’s medical records from the accusing hospital. You might run into problems getting them. In most cases, the hospital and CAS refuse to give the parents their child’s medical records. In case the hospital refuses, ask your lawyer to file a motion in court to get all the records and imaging asap. The records and imaging are essential to have your child diagnosed properly by an expert (not a CAAP doctor and not a doctor from the same accusing hospital, as they do side with each other and are not willing to look beyond the misdiagnosis, such as the neurologist David Callen at McMaster in our case). Without the records, you won’t be able to move on in your fight against the CAS and/or criminal charges.

• Once you have your child’s medical records and imaging, contact medical experts from this list or other actual experts in their fields (radiology, pediatrics, neurology etc.) in Canada or the USA outside of the accusing hospital. Doctors from the same hospital tend to side with each other and will likely not oppose a medical misdiagnosis done by a CAAP doctor from the same institution. When they see the misdiagnosis of abuse, they might simply stop looking for other possible cause of your child’s medical issues. Do push for complete, thorough testing (including genetics) of your child.

• Once you have your child’s medical records and imaging, contact medical experts from this list or other actual experts in their fields (radiology, pediatrics, neurology etc.) in Canada or the USA outside of the accusing hospital. Doctors from the same hospital tend to side with each other and will likely not oppose a medical misdiagnosis done by a CAAP doctor from the same institution. When they see the misdiagnosis of abuse, they might simply stop looking for other possible cause of your child’s medical issues. Do push for complete, thorough testing (including genetics) of your child.

• Child advocacy doctors in Ontario are pediatricians. They are not qualified to make conclusions on radiology findings, neurology findings, ophthalmology findings or any other findings other than general pediatrics. They have no specialized education and in some cases are not deemed to be experts in Child abuse qualified to testify in court on the topic of child abuse (e.g. Burke Baird from McMaster). This is a good article summarizing what is wrong with child abuse pediatricians.

• Child abuse pediatricians will make up an abuse story (based on anything really, from unexplained bruises, to unexplained fractures that got missed during well-baby checkups, to unexplained brain bleed with no head injury) and then claim that since you, the caregiver, have no explanation, abuse is the “most plausible explanation”. This is before they evens start any comprehensive testing, such as extensive bloodwork panels, genetic testing, bone density testing, angiograms etc.

• From then on, any appointment you go to - within the hospital or outside - your child will come with a prefabricated diagnosis of child abuse, which may reflect upon the testing that they will be provided with. In our case, for example, the neurologist at the accusing hospital, failed to give our child a test for strokes (angiogram), based on the fact that our child also presented with healing fractures that we could not explain (as there had been no injury and no fall) and the abuse doctor had “diagnosed” him with child abuse. The abuse doctor Kathleen Nolan claimed that there is no medical condition that would explain both a brain bleed and fractures, ignoring the fact that a child could be having two medical conditions at the same time - one ongoing, one acute. While our child’s fractures were a result of a disease called metabolic bone disease of infancy (with evidence seen in the imaging right from the beginning), he also suffered from strokes, that he received no testing and treatment for, and that were only later pointed out on the imaging by the medical experts from outside the accusing hospital.

• Just like with the police, when you are being interviewed by the “child abuse” (CAAP) doctor and CAS, you are providing them with information that will be used against you. Information will be twisted to fit the story that they had already made up. CAAP doctors will ignore red flags in your child’s bloodwork and imaging. CAS and CAAP doctors are not on your side. They are not there to help your family, as they might claim. Child abuse doctors will be testifying in court against you and CAS will have the case open as long as humanly possible. Do not trust them. Contact your lawyer first before giving any interviews. And most importantly, record everything, including phone communication (get an app that automatically records calls).

• Some Child advocacy “experts” , like Dr.Burke Baird from McMaster, Hamilton, have been deemed NOT qualified to testify as experts in cases of alleged child abuse. Have your lawyer to a voir dire and have the “experts” excluded.

• Falsely accused parents often feel ashamed. Please, don’t be silent. Tell your story.