It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Taking your sick child to the doctor to help them get better, only to be accused of causing those injuries yourself. And as if those heinous accusations aren’t awful enough, now the state is getting involved. You’re going to be investigated, accused, possibly charged with a crime.
Some well meaning person from a poorly regulated agency may even take your kids away and make you jump through hoops for months before you can have them back. IF you get them back. It sounds like the plot of a thriller/drama movie, but it’s actually many people’s personal experience here in Michigan. So here’s what you need to know so that it doesn’t become yours!
How does this even happen to begin with?
Let’s start at the beginning. How could this happen? Why would a doctor, with years of training and experience, decide that a baby with an unexplained fracture, or a toddler with a few bruises must be the victim of child abuse? Chances are, there are multiple reasons, and every case is a little bit different. But the two most common motivations behind calling CPS are probably:
1. “I’m not a hundred percent sure why this child has an injury, and I’d rather err on the side of caution and protect them from further harm, just in case it really is child abuse.”
2. Prejudice. In other words, these doctors have probably seen a frightening number of cases where children were being abused, and they now assume that most cases where there’s an unexplained injury must be just more of the same.
It might not start maliciously, but it escalates quickly!
So you can see that most doctors, when presented with a child’s unexplained injuries, can make a wrong assumption. Not out of vindictiveness or maliciousness, but simply because they’re afraid of being wrong. But once they’ve made that assumption, it gets very hard to go back on your own professional opinion and admit that you were wrong. So most doctors dig in their heels and fight to defend their initial assumptions, even if they’re wrong.
And if CPS gets a call from a doctor saying that there’s a child who is a victim of abuse, they enter the picture already assuming that you’re a child abuser and that your kid is a victim. There’s no room for other options in their mind. They’re starting from the point of view that you did something bad, and everything they do will be done to support that opinion. So as you can see, this whole situation can escalate very quickly.
Make sure you’re protected right from the start!
The very first thing you need to do, the first chance you get after you discover that you’ve been accused of child abuse, is call a defense attorney. And not just any attorney – you need a tenacious, hard working and aggressive defense attorney with decades of experience successfully handling child abuse allegations and fighting off CPS. You need an attorney from the Kronzek Firm.
We have been doing this for over a quarter of a century, and we’re very good at it. We have helped countless families around Michigan protect their children from CPS and mistaken docotrs, and there’s nothing we want more than for families to be preserved and protected. So call us at 866 766 5245. We’re available 24/7 to help you overcome this terrible nightmare.