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A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

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Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#591

Post by rossant »

oooyay wrote: post #419
gwd wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another factor in this, which makes it hard to change: For the people in child welfare organizations, for social workers, for doctors, for police, for judges to change their mind about current and future decisions requires them to change their mind about past decisions. The necessary implication is that many of the people they have persecuted in the past were, in fact, innocent. It requires them to admit that…

There's also the normalization of seeing and hearing awful things. After a while of being exposed to the wretches of humanity you begin to see the signals for the wretches everywhere. As the warrior poet Maslow put it, "if the only tool you ever have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

Totally, child abuse pediatricians, forensic pediatric pathologists etc. are exposed on a daily basis to the very worse things imaginable in the world (autopsies of babies beaten to death and so on), and yet they need to keep a calm and rational stance by analyzing facts objectively. This is hard and they don't always succeed. Some are led to see the worse in everyone and they see potential child abusers in every parent and caregiver.

This can go quite far, with some experts stating that the histories reported by parents and caregivers bringing a child to the hospital with some injuries are always falsified. This can surely happen, but a foundational tenet of medicine is to listen to the patient/parents.

I've seen experts concluding to abuse in 100% of their cases, including those where children hah obvious, DNA-proven genetic conditions causing the observed injuries. Fortunately, some judges remain reasonable and act as "gatekeepers" by exculpating parents and caregivers despite affirmative opinions by reputable experts. But many don't.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#592

Post by rossant »

gwd wrote: post #529
rossant wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's kind of ironic you mention "denial". It turns out this is one of the favorite attacks by "SBS proponents" against those who challenge the scientific reliability of the diagnosis. We are called "denialists" and we're accused of "denying the existence of child abuse" (?). Parents in my organization (Adikia) who face false allegations of abuse are said to be in "denial" of their own abusive behavior. This…

You obviously have more experience than I do; but two phrases I'd be tempted to try out in these discussions are, "If you were wrong, would you want to know?" And at some point later "How would you know if you were wrong?"

That could only happen if such discussions could actually take place. So far, the controversy has been so polarized that there has been almost no communication between the two "sides".

Norman Guthkelch himself (the first to hypothesize a causal link between shaking and subdural/retinal hemorrhage) wrote in 2012 [1]:

"While controversy is a normal and necessary part of scientific discourse, there has arisen a level of emotion and divisiveness on shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma that has interfered with our commitment to pursue the truth."

A French neuropediatrician wrote a medical book in French a few years ago about this issue. When interrogated by a lawyer in a symposium a couple of years ago, the author of the papers linked in my comment above said: "I haven't read this book because I absolutely can't agree with it, since it's written by one of the leaders of a denialist and revisionist school of thought".

How can you even start a discussion in a context where a Godwin point is reached with the very term they use to call you?

[1] https://law.uh.edu/hjhlp/volumes/Vol_12_2/Guthkelch.pdf

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#593

Post by rossant »

pyuser583 wrote: post #580
pivot654 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in child welfare in Australia. Not sure how it compares to the models in other countries, but we desperately try not to remove child from their families. There is very little evidence to support it improves outcomes for those children, and the removing itself is highly horrific for everyone involved. Even in the instances we remove children, we actively attempt to work with the parents to address the issue. We…

How does this play out in Aboriginal communities? In the US we have strict laws regarding how social services interact with native populations.

Some statistics from New Zealand: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/08/study-one-in-f...

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#596

Post by rossant »

appleaday1 wrote: post #9
CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asserting that the caution against shaking babies was intentionally constructed for the sole purpose of the state kidnapping children? For what motivation, to what end? How orchestrated? Who is "the state"? Do they have a hand picked squad of CPS investigators to kidnap children from their targets, or do they just use any CPS investigator? Are the investigators in on it, or are they just thinking they're help…

But the link in question does make it seem like being a nanny probably could have better protections in France if uh, the person lost 4 years due to this charge.

Things are even worse for other nannies. I know many who have been convicted to 8, 12 or even 15 years of jail, after 30 ou 40 years of perfect careers with no problem whatsoever. Some have appealed and were eventually acquitted, others are languishing in prison.

We still have a lot of work to do to raise awareness among nannies about the legal risks of caring very young infants. It can happen to anyone: about 1/3000 babies are affected, and the risk is much higher with babies combining multiple risk factors (male sex, prematurity, low birth weight, high head circumference, respiratory problems, frequent infections, etc.).

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#597

Post by rossant »

skjoldr wrote: post #595

So what I got from this article is that it's a good idea to have a 24/7 CCTV coverage of all areas where a baby might be in case there might be a need to defend oneself from fradulent accusations by government agents. Oh well.

It's actually a fairly good idea, we think about it a lot. My highest hope is that technology soon reaches a point where it's cheap and convenient and not totally socially awkward to videotape the life of a baby 24/7. I feel like we're not totally there yet. The new Ray-Ban Meta can apparently record 60 seconds of video. What we need is 24/7 continuous videotaping to ensure that the exact moment when a baby collapses (and the hours before), and the caregiver calls the ER, is filmed.

A single case where we a video would prove that there was no shaking at this exact moment might help convince many doctors (not all, unfortunately).

Relatedly, this recent medical article [1] reports a case of an alleged short fall resulting in subdural and retinal hemorrhage. As usual, doctors did not believe in the story of the short fall (they assume a short fall can almost never cause them) and they concluded that the short fall was a cover-up for unadmitted abuse. The police was called and, surprise, the whole thing was filmed by CCTV. The videotape proved that the story of the short fall was entirely correct and the caregiver was exculpated.

Interestingly, the doctors did not conclude that their belief was wrong (short falls almost never cause subdural and retinal hemorrhage), but that it was an "outlier".

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10918...

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#598

Post by lazyasciiart »

pivot654 wrote: post #337
tivert wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’! This is just speculation, but I bet those groups (or their members) aren't always calmly and coolly trying to find the best policies protect the welfare of children. Instead they feel themselves on a k…

I work in child welfare in Australia. Not sure how it compares to the models in other countries, but we desperately try not to remove child from their families. There is very little evidence to support it improves outcomes for those children, and the removing itself is highly horrific for everyone involved. Even in the instances we remove children, we actively attempt to work with the parents to address the issue. We…

In America the system is split between people who say we should do everything we can to keep children safe in their own home, and people who think it is wokeness gone mad that a parent can test positive for drugs and not have the kids immediately removed. It is, as you’d expect, a calm and reasonable debate filled with claims that “I’m the only one who is thinking about the best interest of the kids!” and “you hate foster care so much you prefer babies to DIE instead of going to a safe foster home!” (As a foster parent, I have unfortunately found that this kind of idiocy is all too common among foster parents.)

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#599

Post by lazyasciiart »

startupsfail wrote: post #575
RoyalHenOil wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Priors should never, ever factor into it like this. I was a foster child who was taken from my parents wrongly. A third party (not connected to child services) made a false accusation to the cops, who took me and turned me over to child services without any investigation. Even though I insisted nothing had happened and even though child services failed to produce any evidence (beyond aforesaid hearsay) over the cours…

Have you considered suing the third party that made a false accusation? It seems that they’ve caused suffering and irreparable long term harm. This sounds like something that may have a standing. Perhaps you can sue them and either get some material compensation (if they are well to do) put them through a few rounds of trials in another state or something (if they are poor, this will be a good punishment in itself).…

Also not a lawyer, but there is a significant motivation for protection when an incorrect accusation is made in good faith, because a lot of correct reports of child abuse are based on circumstantial evidence and suspicion - so you would need very clear strong evidence that the reporter knew the information was false and was intentionally misleading CPS, or you’d be thrown out of court immediately. In some places you wouldn’t even be given the identity of the reporter.

Re: A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy

#600

Post by lazyasciiart »

dahfizz wrote: post #554
danenania wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first inclination here is to blame the doctor. Per the Hippocratic Oath, doctors need to understand the implications of making reports like this and only do so in cases where there isn't reasonable doubt or plausible explanations other than abuse. Separating children from parents and making accusations like this is extremely traumatic in itself, so the evidence bar needs to be very high. Even if the rules tell doc…

My first inclination is to blame DCF workers. > These people are working in the shadows, in darkness," Lamanna said. "They can show up at your house in the middle of the night with no paperwork, no court order whatsoever, and say we’re removing under the B, we’ve decided an emergency exists." > According to DCF’s 2022 quarterly report, about 60% of parents are reunited with their kids within a year after being remove…

Reuniting within a year is not intrinsically evidence that it was a bad removal - a parent can change a lot in less than a year. Most obviously, one abusive parent can be jailed or kicked out and the children go home to live with the remaining parent, who may have been abused themselves. Rehab, counseling, parenting classes, diagnosis and treatment for mental illness, moving out of an unsafe hoarding home, etc, can all be done in that time.

The ones you want to really examine are the kids who go home in less than a week. At one point I think I read that New Mexico had about 25% of children who entered care returning home within days. Those are very likely to be children who were not at risk of harm in the first place.

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