S07 E07: Selling a Story

- True story, media.

“Please note that this show discusses child abuse,”

which may be difficult for some listeners, for resources about abuse of head trauma, go to shakenbaby.org. The spade of media coverage and lawsuits, attacking child abuse pediatricians,

follow a particular kind of logic. If you can round up a few parents who say they were falsely accused by a certain doctor, this is evidence in and of itself that the doctor is the problem.

I've also noticed a trend, using one big splashy story. Often as not, it's a complicated munchausam by proxy story, like Justin Nepellitear,

Mykawalski, or the Stelts case in Pennsylvania, has sort of a church in horse to usher in a series of other, quote falsely accused parents in rapid succession. Usually, including even less detail in nuance

than the more headline-grabbing main anecdote. And in this way, the issue is made to look systemic. Wisconsin D.A. Matthew Torbenson has noticed this as well. - I think it's because people highlight one particular case and then make the circumsensitive

“of that case seem as though that's how every case”

and every situation exists. So I think what the defense does really well in this area, they grab the media's attention and they send a message out through the media. And if that media narrative

that they're selling proves to be false, the media does nothing to correct that narrative. They just move on to the next story in the next case. - The Kowalski V. Johns Hopkins trial was aired on court TV, where it was called the Take Care of My A trial.

And news of the initial $261 million verdict

made a ton of headlines. People magazine in New York Magazine ran splashy features on the family's victory, but news of the appellate courts ruling vacating the verdict, barely made headlines.

And after my appearance on court TV. - And I'm wondering if there should have been, perhaps a little more of a dialogue, a little more open-mindedness on the part of the hospitals to do a little more investigating

before taking a nine-year-old tenure all the way from her family. - Well, I would very much challenge the idea that this was a snap decision. Fortunately, you had an experienced child

abuse pediatrician working on this case, Dr. Sally Smith. And again, there was a threat to my as life in this case. I don't know that people completely understand that because their understanding of much hasn't by proxy abuse is very low in general.

- I wasn't holding my breath for anyone else to issue retractions. I've spent years now trying to get the journalists to cover these stories to pay attention to everything they're missing about these cases.

And there's one journalist in particular who's become something of a bit noir. And that is my kicks and buck, who presented my sister, making Carter, as a wrongly accused parent in his do-no harm series,

despite the prolific evidence of abuse in this case. I covered all of that way back in season two. And as it turns out, Matthew had a memorable run in with my kicks and buck as well. - I think they're selling a story

and they're not selling the truth to be blunt about it.

“And I think it causes a disservice to children.”

I think it causes a disservice to the public quite honestly. - Mike Hicks and Bob wrote the story about John Cox and said that there were 15 doctors that disagreed with the child abuse diagnosis. - As soon as Matthew mentioned this name,

I recognized the story and that blazing headline. And ER doctor was charged with abusing his baby, but 15 medical experts say there's no proof. Mike Hicks and Boggs reporting on this case is littered with unattributed quotes from doctors

at the hospital where Cox worked about an out-of-control child abuse team. Many of the doctors that he says disagreed with the diagnosis actually initially agreed with the diagnosis. They were just friends with the Cox family.

And he had great sympathy for John Cox who was a doctor in the same facility.

And so they second guessed their own decisions

when they were initially reported as abuse. But the thing that really bothered me about Mike Hicks and Boggs and his reporting on that story is we found out that the defendant or John Cox actually lied. He lied to medical professionals, he lied to law enforcement.

He said that he fell asleep with the child. Fell asleep with him during the night that he woke up in the morning with her put her in the trucks of his arm was reading on his cell phone fell asleep and rolled over on top of her.

And then he provided photographs of a reenactment that he did. The reenactment that he did was physically impossible. That child would have suffocated based on the reenactment photographs that he showed. So that was one of the first major concerns about that.

But none of those photographs were shared publicly. None of those photographs were talked to with medical professionals. Hicks and Boggs' lengthy piece includes statements from the hospital, CPS, and Torbenson himself explaining why they can't comment.

But most of the story is the first person

account of John Cox and his wife, who is also a doctor,

Hicks and Boggs' piece describes Cox accidentally

following a sleep cuddling his daughter and then waking up in a panic.

“He writes, quote, "She wasn't in distress,”

but he said he could tell from the way she was moving her left arm that she might have a broken collarbone, a common injury in infants that typically heals on its own without medical treatment." End quote.

The piece goes on to describe Cox calling his wife to confer with her about whether or not he should take the child to the doctor. But the bigger problem for Mike Hicks and Boggs the defendant actually called a online nurse.

The morning right before he took the child in to see the doctor and reported that she had been up crying for 12 hours straight. She was inconsolable, that she, in essence, that he was at his wits and taking care of her

a completely contradictory medical history

than what he provided to anybody else. A medical history that would support a care take her becoming really frustrated with a child who had been awake and would not stop crying and who is uncontrollable.

Hicks and Boggs' attempts to make the case that this was a misdiagnosis of abuse based in part on some medical literature that classifies classical injuries in young children as not being in and of themselves,

specifically concerning for abuse, when compared to an injury such as a posterior rib fracture. Hicks and Bogg also notes that a dermatologist determined that the bruises on the baby were actually birthmarks, but there are other factors that go into diagnosing abusive injuries.

Chiefly, whether the injuries match the caregiver's history. - And when you looked at that medical history and combined with the fact that the child had fingertip bruises on the child's back, linear bruises on the child's arms

that would be consistent with grab marks and then a fractured clavicle which would be consistent with the thumb would go in that exact manner of holding the child. I mean, it was diagnostic for abuse

and Hicks and Bogg ran from doing any follow-up stories on it once that false history came out. And as soon as we found that false history, the attorneys that were representing Mr. Cox from Chicago, the high-powered law firm,

they got off the case and he chose to resolve the case. - So when you say he chose to resolve the case, he took a plea? - He took a plea to a deferred prosecution agreement so he admitted to a child in the black charge.

And we did that for a number of reasons in this particular case, but he did enter into a plea agreement where he did, he entered a plea, did a deferred prosecution agreement and had a meeting number of conditions.

- I've probably spent far too much of my one precious life thinking about why my Kicks and Bogg a journalist who has once been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize chose to lie in eyes of use of parents. - I work in a VR.

I know when kids are abused. I know sometimes it's difficult. I said, but you guys have this completely wrong. - Me and John, when upstairs, when we sat on the floor and held her. When we told her how much we loved her.

- We would do everything we could for the rest of our lives to try and get her to come home.

“- But why let the facts interrupt an emotional arc like that?”

The volume of these stories of falsely accused parents presented side by side does a lot of work in making it look as though there must be something going on. And then the media stories begin to build on one another. Take care of Maya's producer Caitlin Keating

has said that the Kualski story is representative of thousands of other families across the country who are experiencing the same thing. TBD on where she got those numbers, but she told the rap in a 2023 interview quote,

there's rarely an hour that goes by that we're not getting a tweet, direct message, email, phone call, or letter. It really shows you how widespread this problem is and just how many people are experiencing something similar.

And quote, well, you've now heard John's story of being falsely accused by Sally Smith. What about the three others? - They find broken ribs, they find a brain bleed. - They found old and new brain bleeds.

And I was like, what do you mean? Like, she has this, I brought her here for bruises. And that's when I met Sally Smith. Their frantic, their desperate. And one thing that they all had in common

was Dr. Sally Smith and John Hopkins, all children's hospital. - It turns out the connection between these families goes deeper than their animus for Dr. Sally Smith and their moment in the limelight.

So today, we ask, is the flood of families who contacted Caitlyn Keating?

“Evidence of a widespread problem of false allegations?”

Or is it something else entirely? People believe their eyes. That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.

If we didn't, you could never make it through your day.

I'm Andrea Dunlop and this is nobody should believe me. (upbeat music)

- About an hour into take care of Maya,

“the film diverges from its main thread of the Koalski story”

to introduce four other parents who claim they were falsely accused of abuse by Dr. Sally Smith. Here's journalist, Stephanie Chen, in the film. - It was January 2019 when I hit publish on that piece about the Koalski family.

And I kind of thought I'd move on to the next thing. But that was when the Koalski were coming in and the email started coming in. And I realized that this was a lot bigger than just the Koalski's.

- John is the sole male voice. He's listed simply as father. The film doesn't say what happened to Nolan. The most we get is this brief snippet from John. - He's not breathing, he barely has a pulse.

- The film is more concerned with what John went through. - I spent over 300 days in jail before they finally dropped the charges. They ruined my life because of it. - The stories of the three other families

are similarly opaque and told in rapid fire clips meant to present a pattern not of abuse by the parents but as evidence of abuse by the system.

“And the film renders the children in these cases”

all but invisible. Save for some loving images of them with their parents. - John's biological daughter is featured in a brief shot of him braiding her hair.

Nolan's very existence is never mentioned.

- One of the other parents we meet is Carly Bryan. Carly and her then fiance Eric Miller were arrested in August of 2019 after bringing their daughter to Johns Hopkins all children's.

Here's Carly in the film. - She started throwing up. Then she started getting little bruises. I'm rushing to the hospital. - Even in this very brief snippet,

Carly strays from the basic facts of the case because Carly did not rush her daughter to the hospital. No one did. Carly reported to the police that she brought her daughter to Johns Hopkins

all children's for blood work at the recommendation of her pediatrician after she broached concerns about the child vomiting during her two month well visit. Carly reported that the pediatrician had told her

there was no rush but that she should take her in. Here's Carly speaking with Detective Karen Frank. - I've been in there already three or four times. - Okay, for the concern on her being sick. So as soon as you call and said that she was vomiting,

they said bring her in. - Yes, okay, yeah. - Carly reported issues with the child vomiting in the weeks leading up to the two month visit. - And then today she had bruises

without the remaining inner bleeding. - She bruises white. - Right, care she had on her wrist was like little dots. They said could be just blood under the,

that maybe she had a blood disorder or something. And we didn't want to give her her immunizations without knowing what's going on with her. - It was when Carly's baby was evaluated by a nurse practitioner at Johns Hopkins All Children's

that the extent of her injuries begin to emerge. And now there were questions for the parents. And they'd be asked by police officers. - She fall or anything or you know, I've been trying to think of anything.

I'm trying that they said tomorrow they'll know like looking at them or like a timeframe on when maybe it happened. Maybe what happens was they told you. - They didn't tell me much just that

it was some sort of trauma. They'll know more tomorrow on what they may think happen.

- She never, like she all I could think of

is that she's always on her swing or, you know, this swing or she likes to be rocked all the time and maybe whoever holding her, I don't know about that.

“That's what I've been driving myself crazy”

trying to figure out if it's trauma to the head. I just can't think of, I never dropped her, she never hit her head on anything. - When the baby was examined at the hospital, doctors found a number of serious injuries,

including bilateral subdual hemorrhages, bleeding on the child's brain, a bruise on her left buttocks, an injury to one of the child's ribs, a tibial spiral fracture on the child's right leg,

and linear bruises on the child's arm. Carly, who had been home with the baby on maternity leave and was primary caregiver, had no explanation for the serious injuries for two-month-old head sustained.

- Do you think so you don't think anybody else might may have harmed her, nobody else watches her, or just besides you. - Recently, that's why I'm trying to figure out when it happened, 'cause recently I did have a friend

and down and she, I mean, I never left her alone

in my store though, so I mean, I was always in the house. So like I feel like I would have heard of she had been hurt. - After the nurse practitioner flagged the abuse concerns and a DCF and police investigation were initiated, Dr. Sally Smith did her evaluation on August 21st.

Dr. Smith's explanation of the significance of these injuries is excerpted in the police report. The bruising on the arm was consistent with a high force grasp. The spiral fracture on the baby's leg

was result of twisting or jerking the lower chin to the ankle.

two significant brain injuries from shaking,

“causing pleading and swelling on the brain,”

which had also been the cause of the vomiting. Dr. Smith also told police that these incidents would likely have caused the baby to lose consciousness and could have also caused seizures. She said these injuries would be extremely painful

and evident to any caregiver who is present when they happened. We didn't hear an explanation of any of these injuries in the film, and this omission does a lot of work. Presumably, if viewers were presented with the child's actual condition,

they might wonder what happened to the baby, but the film just completely skirts the fact that someone badly injured a two-month-old baby just as it omits any mention of Nolan or his death. The question in this case wasn't if, just who?

So you said you worked six days a week, so it's so Carly, usually at home? Yeah. That's Carly's fiance and the father of her baby Eric Miller.

When you come home for work, do you take over?

I take a shower, so that's me. My food, if I need some food real quick. She needs you for, okay. Yeah, she wants me. I just pick it up on your word, you do it.

“Yeah, so that's what you eat some food real quick.”

And I mean, we have like little things like, I do all the dishes, like I try to take it. So like if there's something that needs done before, I get that done, if our bottles need clean, I clean them, and then I try to take over the baby

and go from there. Carly and Eric were interviewed by the police on August 21st. According to police reports, Carly did not appear upset when she was told about the child's injuries.

Here she is recounting that moment in the film. And I was like, what do you mean, like she has this, I brought her here for bruises? Carly maintains in the interview that she doesn't know what happened to the baby

and tosses out a number of ideas that she balanced the baby too vigorously, that she strapped her into her car seat to tight, that she might have dropped her phone on the baby's head. This case immediately presented timeline issues,

because the baby's injuries weren't reported right away. So it left a lengthy period during which the injuries could have happened. However, both parents told the police that no one else had been alone with their baby.

Anybody else alone with the baby?

- Alone with the baby, no, no, that will never.

- And what brought you here is because the baby has a couple of injuries, right? - Mm-hmm. - Do you know how (beep) about them? - No.

- I was unaware of them till today. Carly called me and we had seen the bruise because she thought it was from the car seat.

“Are these on her, this little bruise on her arm, as she had?”

- Okay. - And Carly thought it was from the car seat. - Eric Miller had a bit of a checkered past. He'd racked up arrests for home in vehicular burglary seven to eight years prior,

but according to his boss at the plant nursery where he worked, that was all in the past. - And how has he been as a boy? - Awesome. - As a person. - As a good person.

- He's a good person. He's a good person. You could tell when he started with us that he was very unsure of himself. He'd been in the trouble.

He needed a place to get a fresh start to be able to actually put his better foot forward. And I would say over the course of the next year and a half to two years, you could see him grow up. You could see him actually kind of lost

and into one of those people that you knew had good intentions. He was wanting to lead you to, "Yes, I was a troubled youth, yes, we all do stupid things "and are you correct?" - Fine, Tim.

- And he's been the epitome of a responsible person. He makes it to work every day. He's never late. He hardly ever calls off. I mean, if he does, you know there really is something wrong.

- There wasn't evidence beyond a reasonable doubt implicating one parent over the other. And neither of them offered any insight into how these serious injuries had happened. In the Netflix film, Carly says this.

- They tried to divide her father and I, they wanted us to argue, they wanted us to blame each other. - But of course, someone was to blame. Someone had seriously hurt their baby.

And on August 23rd, a Venice couple being charged with child neglect after a two-month-old child suffered severe injuries while in their care. Both parents were arrested for child neglect

with great bodily harm. The only option in the case like this. I cannot tell you for sure who hurt this baby, but the film presents this case as though no one did. And that's certainly not true.

Carly and Eric's case is presented as a wrongful accusation because criminal charges against them were eventually dropped. Prosecutors are pretty low with understandably

to pursue a case where a perpetrator can't be identified. And in the absence of a criminal path, it becomes a DCF issue. According to her Facebook, Carly and Eric eventually accepted a case plan from DCF

that included psychological evaluation, anger management, parenting classes, and couples therapy.

for many months as they worked their way through

dependency court hearings. In a Facebook post on January 15, 2020, Carly posted a Harold Tribun article about Dr. Sally Smith and includes an update on her own case.

She writes, "Dr. Sally Smith is the only doctor in the ER to claim it was abuse." And Carly goes on to offer her take on the real cause of the injuries to her baby, saying that they happened during her delivery.

I asked Dr. Jill Glick about the idea that birth trauma might be mistaken for abuse. - Certainly, it's another spaghetti thrown against the wall, right? It's another one, well, let's try this, well, let's try that.

“And I think any reasonable person listening to this to say,”

who's had a child taking care of a child,

if they have a serious injury, you'll notice it. I mean, the child will have pain. And also, we know from our science that bones heal a certain way. And when you look on x-ray, you're seeing bone formation.

So if they're occurred at birth in its seven weeks, there should be new bone formation. And so it's an acute fracture. A lot of times, what we try to do to make sure there's no bias with things is we don't give a history

and just say what's going on with this fracture to a radiologist for instance or something like that. And I'll say, oh, this is an acute fracture. How old is this radiographically? Oh, three to five days, right?

Or something like that. I mean, so again, the science argues against that. And it's just unfortunate that this kind of weaves through,

“because I will tell you one, I think one of the challenges”

for our system again is that when there's a case and there's a defense attorney, she they can pull in experts to make these arguments, the prosecutor has the treating physicians. - And Dr. Sally Smith confirmed this as well.

- Well, one would only have to examine the child and look at the characteristics of the bruising, because bruising doesn't last for two months, unless it's been absolutely horrendous from the first place.

And one could look at the radiology images. Fractures heal in a fairly predictable pattern with new bone being formed around the fracture. - And just to add here, Dr. Smith is commenting solely on information that is already publicly available

about this child's injuries. - You can typically not necessarily narrow down to a day or two, but you can narrow down to a few days worth of, there's a certain timeframe in the beginning that there's bleeding

“and swelling of the area around the broken bone.”

And then the next thing that happens is you start to get little hints of new bone being formed. And then it forms into a whole thing called callous,

which is basically bone all around the fracture

to stabilize it and heal it and put the bone back together. And then all of that extra bone that was present to stabilize and heal the bone is reabsorbed so that the bone goes back essentially to its original shape and size.

So if a fracture in a two month old is two months old, therefore occurred during the delivery process, I mean, first of all, hopefully somebody would have noticed that in the newborn nursery. And then in terms of the brain scenario,

well, babies can sustain, mostly in vaginal deliveries, they can sustain, subteral hemorrhage, usually across the back of the brain during delivery. Those are almost universally gone within three weeks to four weeks after the delivery.

They are almost universally asymptomatic and vast majority of the infant literature about subteral hematomas would suggest that, they don't result in sustained, hemorrhage being present in a pattern typical

of abuse of head trauma for weeks or months. - In the comments on Carly's Facebook post, a woman called Viviana Graham, comments that Dr. Smith was also her abusing cap and tags get another woman called Ashley Finigan,

who replies that Carly is actually a friend of hers. And if those names sound familiar, it's because they belong to the two other parents along with John, who are featured in Take Care of Maya. Carly posts again in August in a private Facebook group

associated with the advocacy organization fractured families. There she reports that her daughter still isn't home after 10 months. She has another court date coming up

and she asks the group what they think about putting cameras up around the house to prevent her from being taken away again.

of security camera and another woman weighs in

about how she installed cameras

“to monitor CPS interactions and quote, "Keep them from line."”

And that woman is Megan Carter, my sister. So how do all these people know each other? You might ask, well, it turns out being investigated for child abuse is quite a group bonding activity. True story.

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and 365 day returns. Quince.com/believe. I remind you that shopping with our sponsors is a great way to support the show. And if you run into me out in the wild,

you can bond over the fact that we're both wearing quince. Now I'm an EuroPromonat of Shopify.de/recorder. We instantly called 911. We did what you're taught to do. That's Ashley Finnegan, in take care of Maya.

Like the other parents, including the Qualskis, Ashley positions herself as on a mission to affect systemic change. There's been so many cases, so many families that have been affected and wrongly accused.

How many times are you allowed to be wrong and destroy lives before they say, "Okay, that's enough." It's time that we change some things. What is it truly gonna take? But before we get into Ashley's activism,

I want to back up and talk about her case. Because once again, these details are entirely omitted from the film. On the evening of December 12, 2017, 29-year-old Ashley Finnegan got into an argument

with her boyfriend and the father for two-month-old daughter, 34-year-old George Glachenko. George was going through Ashley's phone and saw a Facebook friend request that made him angry. He then went into the bedroom to confront Ashley,

who is either laying on the bed or getting ready to get into the shower according to the parents' shifting accounts. What happened next is even Markier, but a result it in a 911 call at 9.15pm.

Their daughter had been struck in the head and was bleeding. According to Ashley and George, the baby's injury happened when George accidentally threw a cell phone at her head. Here's Ashley's speaking to the police.

The reason why we wanted to speak to you, okay, is we got the medical reports where what interests are. And I think what you were hearing from that doctor is they understand that those are interests

we're not caused by a cell phone being thrown. - Well, that, this is, you can literally see it. I took pictures myself last night of the cell phone next to her face, like you can see it. I saw that with my own eyes.

Now, if there's something else, I don't know about that.

“And that's what I'm like, I'm trying to ask questions,”

that there's something else I've the right to know about it, too. Regardless of the circumstances of it, I should have the right to know what's wrong with her. - And what we're saying to you is there's, we know based on the evidence, the physical evidence,

that there's more to the story than what you have told us, okay? And we want to tell how much it looks to speak to you about that, okay? - Okay.

- And that's why that's the reason why we're here. - Okay, what happened to happen, it's tragic. You cannot change it. - I can't. - So there's no, there's just one lying about it.

- Yeah. - And what I saw and what happened is what happened? You've with this cell phone and it hit her in the face.

- But, there's nothing else to that, though.

“If there's something else in the back of her head,”

that's something that is unbeknownst to me.

That was my first day back to work.

I literally dropped her off the (beep) to eat a clock in the morning, and he picked her up. I had been home for 25 minutes, tops. I literally walked in, got my oldest started her homework, was messing with the baby.

The baby was playing this Rudolph game that we had a craft party over the weekend. It was still taped to the door. Playing with the baby, I sat on the couch a (beep) while my two-year-old was playing the Rudolph game.

And then I put the kids to bed. One upstairs to go lay her down, take a shower, and that's when they happen. - The story that Ashley tells is extremely hard to make sense of. She claims that the infant was on the bed,

and wearing a bright pink onesie, according to the police reports. But George threw his phone at the baby by accident and simply didn't see her there. Even as a non-medical professional,

who's nonetheless been in the presence of babies, this is tough to picture. At the hospital, a CT and MRI

showed a depression in the baby's skull and a fracture.

The baby ended up needing surgery where doctors found evidence of shearing injuries, likely from shaking, on her brain, in addition to the skull fracture. But Ashley was insistent.

“- So we wanted to have a chance to talk to you”

because it's just not matching up and because we're involved with the injuries and the way and the cell phone, it's, yeah. - It does match a perfect, I look at the face. You can literally see the line.

- When that's what you talk about when. - You can literally see the ridges from my cell phone, okay? - So I'll let you know. - Yes, but the back one, I haven't seen. Like just what the lady said today,

but when you look at it on the X-ray, it looks like where her head is just fusing together. 'Cause you know, their head isn't all the way together anyways. - Yeah. - And that's what I don't know.

I want to know, like, is this old, how you tell, like what would caught you know what I'm saying?

And I haven't even got an answer to that yet.

- We hear it. - So let me just tell you what, because we're a long portion. - Okay. - And before we can talk to you,

we gotta reach you, right? Okay. So I want to do that at this time and then I have a chance to talk to you. - Okay, well, all right.

- All right. - All right. - I have a question. - Yes. So what did he get arrested for?

- For aggravated child abuse.

“So that's what he was saying here to arrest me, too.”

- On December 14th, George was arrested for aggravated child abuse. The affidavit notes that the injuries the child had sustained could result in permanent disability.

Ashley had a troubled history with the father for other children and was recovering addict who'd been to jail before. And she seemed intense on defending George. - I already talked by the lawyer

and he said if they're coming up there, they're coming to arrest you. - Okay. So insane of that. Are you willing to talk to us?

- I mean, if I'm gonna go to jail anyways, what's the point? Because the story's not gonna change. Do you understand? Like the version, what I saw with my own eyes

with that self-homing from is what happened. If something occurred before I got home, I don't know. That's all I can say. - And what I'm telling you is that

with the medical people have told us is that injury was not caused by that phone. - It was a very high impact force that had hit. - You can throw a baseball at 70 miles a hour. - According to the medical doctors,

they're saying there's no way a cell phone would cause that damage. And that's why I really did. - That's a lot. That's just, I know I don't have that.

Okay. I know what happened. You can literally see the imprint of my case. When you see the broken bone, it's like this, like the ribs on the side

of my cell phone case. You can see where the tip of the cell phone hit her forehead. I mean, nothing is gonna change that for being a fact. - So that's why he was asking you if you're willing to speak to us.

- That's gonna be the same thing I said though. - Okay. - But there's more information that we would like to get a timeline and things like that of exactly leading up to it.

And it all hinges on you and really, I mean, if there's anything more-- - No, that's it. - That's literally-- - Ashley was also arrested on December 14th

for aggravated child abuse accessory after the fact and neglect of a child with great bodily harm. The affidavit notes that her lies about the victim's injury delayed necessary medical trauma care.

So what did George have to say? - I was cooking a pizza and I picked up the old ladies phone when I started going through which I did every once in a while. She does it with me and then I noticed that she had.

- I don't know if she friend requests it, of course, she accepted the request of offered it the guy's name, somebody she knows in the past. And I got jealous and through the phone. Not meaning to hit her or anybody.

- Okay. - That's how it was in your bedroom? - Yes. - If you went to throw it down on the bed or the floor or whatever, not aiming at anybody

and maybe it was on the bed, I didn't know. - Where was she at?

- Yes. - On the bed.

I thought the baby was in, I guess.

Look at her, they're probably. - We're going to develop that scenario.

“- We create a little chaos in that, yeah.”

The baby was on the bed. - The story changed as to whether Ashley was on the bed or on her way into the shower. And whether not George was standing in the doorway and tossed the phone or standing directly over the baby

and spiked the phone into her head without seeing her. - And Ashley's immediate actions afterwards are equally hard to square. - How long, how long from time to baby got hit to you guys called 911?

- It's like, I told you everything that just happened. He grabbed her, I was like, oh my God, you hit the baby. He picked her up and hit me. - The baby, the baby, the baby, the baby, the baby, the baby, the baby, the baby, the baby, the baby.

She was bleeding and she just described that she cried like the painful cry. And he's trying to like cuddle her and grab in the wash bag. - There, you guys have left as soon as you call that when it goes, you know, the rescue came.

We were there.

- Yeah, we came through your house with wine open up.

- Yeah, they door doesn't latch to it anyway. - Okay. - Well, that makes sense. Your home is a deputy outside to stand and buy. Does we have no idea what was going on?

What we needed to, you know, click, you know, pictures. There was blood on, there was blood on the blanket that was seen because they looked through the house when they walked through the house or looking around. Would rescue, they didn't notice the, okay.

With that, did you give them permission to go back into the home? - No, no, I didn't even know that they were there. - Okay. - You give us permission to go there and take out your house.

- No, no, you're not gonna set date to that. - No, I don't, I don't see why it's necessary. - Okay. - Well, it isn't necessary because we don't know what happened with this child exactly.

“So that's why I'm asking you for a consent too.”

Just to take a photograph of the adventures and of the bed and the bloody blanket. - Her blanket. I mean, I don't care if you take pictures of that. - No, we're not going through the home

when I search for anything. - Nothing, it doesn't matter. There's nothing that, no one would get in any trouble. There's nothing in there that you guys would find that anybody would get in trouble.

It's just a morning. - Would you give us consent? - To take pictures, I don't give you consent to go and search my house. I give you consent to take pictures with us there.

- Would you there? - Yeah. - Well, at this point, that's why I was either gonna ask you for consent and then you're giving me a written consent to go there.

Take photographs of our crimes. She's gonna come here and text her to come here and take pictures of her daughter. - And then I'm so worried that this is crazy. - You can get trouble for an accident, honey.

This is crazy. - They did call 911 as they say in the film. But then, opted not to wait for the ambulance and got in the car to drive to event as hospital instead. Reportedly, on the car ride over,

Ashley was overheard telling George to just say it was an accident and not to go back to the house because he'd be arrested. - Yeah.

- Well, that's what I mean. I was like, do you think my mom said it to me? - Yeah. - I mean, I didn't even lie. That's a crazy thing.

What if the baby would threw a toy in here? - I sort of clear out some things about what I would heard is that there was this argument between you two. - Wasn't talking about getting into the shower. - He saw something on my phone and pissed him off me

through the film. - Enjoying you. - No, he didn't know the baby was in the bed. - He threw it at you though. - No, I was getting into the shower.

I just got home from work. - The baby was left alone on the bed. - Yes, I was just, set her down. - He's correct. - And he chucked the phone into the bed and it's where he hit the baby.

- This is crazy. - Is that what you're telling me? - Yes, sir. - Throughout her interviews, Ashley takes the posture that everyone is making too big of a deal

out of her two-month-old baby having brain injuries that required surgery. And according to doctors, could cause permanent disability. According to Ashley, the doctors are the real problem. - This is like a nightmare.

And then two days into another saying that there's another fracture.

“And I'm like, how two days later, are you guys just noticing it?”

And no one said anything to me until this afternoon. No other doctor, they even came in this morning and showed me MRIs to shed an MRI in this morning.

They never said anything about it.

And then later, like 30 minutes later, another doctor comes in that child protective doctor and is literally like screaming in my face. - Oh, well, well. - About the baby.

- About the doctor, yeah. - The doctor was like, yeah. - The doctor literally yelled at me. Because she's like, she started, first off she was just saying things that weren't true.

She's like, well, the first verse, she was very abrasive. She's like, the first version of your story is you were laying in your bed. I said, I never, that's a lie. I've never once said that to anyone.

I've talked to everybody here at too much. (clears throat) And then she's like, the baby was whining. She was upset. She didn't pain.

I was like, oh my God, I got so bad. She's in pain. She's like, oh, what do you expect? She just tears on your brain. And like, no, she doesn't.

She just has the fracture. And then the doctor walks over and starts looking at the back of her head. And I was like, it's not right there. It's right here.

She's on this side of her face. There's stable marks out because when they did her surgery,

So she's like, looking at that, well, what is this? It's lost from the surgery. And then she's looking back here and I said, it's up here and she said, yeah, there's a full number. There's a whole not their fracture.

“That's what you're saying doesn't make sense.”

And I was like, whoa, like the doctor, I was like, excuse me, why are you yelling? And the doctor was just in here, 20 minutes ago,

and never said anything about that.

While I'm telling you, I'm not going to tell you something that isn't true. I said, we just told you two minutes ago that I said we're playing an event too. So what do you expect me to not question it?

I said trust me, and this is bad enough as it is. Before appearing in Take care of Maya, Ashley's story was picked up by Daphne Chen, who writes this about her interaction with Sally Smith, quote, she did not introduce herself or explain

why she was there. According to Finagans, Smith claimed her story had been inconsistent and that the child had multiple fractures from multiple blows. At one point, Finagans said Smith was yelling two inches

from my face.

“Smith left after a nurse rushed into the room,”

according to Finagans.

She said the nurse later apologized

for Smith's bedside manner. I asked Sally about all of this. The fiction persists in this scenario. Yeah. As I recall, I mean, I was kind of asking my series

of questions and trying to see what was happening beforehand, and what the child was like the day before, and some of the other things we talked about, that would be typical of the history gathering that I would do with the parent at the bedside.

I don't have a recording on my phone of introducing myself, but I was introduced myself. And as I recall, Ashley was insistent that the child didn't even really have a fracture that it's not a broken bone, it's not a fracture,

not a broken bone, these kinds of things. There's a fair amount of layperson misunderstanding about broken bones anyway.

“And so I actually pulled up the scan in the room.”

They have computer screens and stations in the patient rooms, and the ICU where this kid was. And showed her the fractures and showed, there's a thing they do called a 3D reconstruction, where it's sort of like an image of the skull

that you can see, and it can often be a little more, make it a little clearer to lay people in particular, exactly what the pattern of the fracture was. So she was insisting that her child barely had any injury or why he got brain surgery, or she got brain surgery,

I don't know, but anyway. And so I was showing her the scan and saying, like it's right here and everything, she was the one that was like a footer to away from my face, like screaming at me and not the other way around.

And the nurse came in to kind of like stand with me, like is this person going to like try to punch Dr. Smith, or something like that?

And basically stayed and came out of the room with me

because it was concerned that Ashley was kind of unhinged in there. Of all the stories in this particular continuum, this one is perhaps the most confounding as an example of a false allegation of abuse. There's a lot of conversation into abuse cases

about appearance and tent, and it does matter to a point, but a parent who shakes their child may not mean to hurt them. And George may not have meant to hurt his baby, but even if we take their story at face value,

he flew into a jealous rage after going through his fiance's phone and threw it at their baby's head hard enough that she needed brain surgery. What are we really arguing about here? The charges against Ashley were eventually dropped,

but George just weren't. He pled no contest to child abuse. He was sentenced to 25 days in jail and two years of house arrest followed by two years probation. And like other families, they eventually took a case plan

and were reunited with their children after a lengthy court battle during which Ashley showed up with a large group of supporters wearing t-shirts with her daughter's face on it. And well, she's definitely angry at Dr. Sally Smith.

Like John, Ashley's convinced the whole system has it out for her. On February 2, 2021, as George is coming up on the end of his probation, she writes in the Facebook group, states attorney hates me and is planning to fight against him

getting off early. I made it clear to her and in court, she was a liar and using our case to further her career. I sister chimed in on this post with a bit of legal advice. And then, on June 29, 2021, Ashley post about a journalist

called Caitlyn Keating, who's looking for four families to feature in a piece she's working on.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

“Almost no one has been more prolific in the media stories”

about falsie accused parents than Viviana Graham, who got the most screen time of the four families covered in take care of Maya. She saw us for less than 10 minutes, and then my husband was arrested for aggravated child abuse.

You may be noticing a pattern right now in the way these stories are being presented.

A 10-minute visit, a rush to judgment by an all-powerful doctor.

-Rolly in the room with us less than 10 minutes. -This is the doctor. -Yes. -The child abuse. -Yes, doctor. -Yes. -When the state's expert on abuse, got it wrong.

-It was just sad. -I cannot believe we're going to this. -It's really destroying families. -The last clip is from a local news segment that featured Viviana. The other voice you hear is Vadim Kushner, who's also featured in "Daphne Chens" reporting,

and who filed a lawsuit against Dr. Sally Smith and others, and retained former Kowalski Attorney Gregory Anderson. Besides Sally Smith and their side-by-side media coverage,

“Vadim Kushner, John Stewart, and Viviana's”

has been Jeremy Graham have something else in common, a documented history of domestic violence. Viviana and Jeremy were married in 2006, and their union was by all accounts a pretty tumultuous one. According to police reports, Jeremy was arrested

for domestic battery in 2010, following an incident where he grabbed and squeezed Viviana by the throat. Viviana filed and then withdrew a domestic violence

in junction against her husband, but never pressed criminal charges.

Viviana told police that he'd been cheating on her and that he had substance use issues with alcohol and prescription drugs, which he'd gone to rehab for in 2009. The police were also called to the couple's home

on September 23, 2015 for a so-called verbal domestic, according to the police reports from this incident, Viviana told the officer that the couple had been arguing more frequently since their baby was born. Viviana told police that she wanted to leave with the baby

and that Jeremy was an allowing her to. She said that he had not harmed the child, however,

“he had anger issues that could cause the baby to be injured.”

Less than two weeks later, their formal baby landed in the hospital in the first of two incidents. On this occasion, it was determined by police that Jeremy had been feeding the baby alone in his room,

while Viviana was cleaning the house. Jeremy told paramedics and later police that the baby had begun gasping for air when he was feeding him a bottle, then stopped breathing and went limp for eight minutes before paramedics arrived.

This was believed at the time to be a choking incident and the child was given a chest X-ray and then released. Paramedics were called to the couple's house 19 days later on October 25th, 2015. This incident also happened while Jeremy was alone with the baby.

The family had just returned from watching football and said hooters when Jeremy reported that the baby started seizing in his play chair. And it was this visit that led to the child protection team report and the call to law enforcement.

In the days that followed, the baby would be evaluated by a number of medical professionals, including an ophthalmologist and CPT medical director, Dr. Sally Smith. Much of the specifics of the child's condition are redacted from reports,

but it was determined that the baby had no health issues of significance prior to the October 6 incident,

which was, in light of the second incident,

determined likely to be an instance of abuse of head trauma as well. On October 29th, Jeremy, who'd hired an attorney, turned himself in and was arrested for aggravated child abuse.

The report sites, Smith's findings, and the comments Viviana had made several weeks earlier that she feared Jeremy would hurt their baby. During the investigation, the police spoke to a number of people close to the couple

and the police report includes a number of text messages changes between Viviana and a confidential informant. The paint, a troubling picture of the family's home life. In these messages, Viviana expresses frustration at Jeremy for his hair, trigger temper,

telling her friend he'd yelled at their three-week old baby to shut up, and she recounts him getting mad at the baby for crying. Viviana ludes to an incident right before the so-called verbal domestic on September 23rd, where he'd been violent

with her. At one point, Viviana seems to be considering leaving Jeremy, but says she feels guilty for taking her son's father away. She writes of her son, "I don't want him to be like him." At one point in the exchange, Jeremy takes Viviana's phone

and responds to her friend who just asked if she was okay. He writes, "No, I beat her ass. Mind your own fucking business. Why don't you concentrate on finding yourself a man and staying out of our business?"

Viviana confirms in a reply that Jeremy had taken her phone earlier. We talked earlier about Viviana recommending brands of surveillance cameras to fellow mom Carly in a Facebook discussion, but according to her text,

it wasn't CPS she was meaning to keep an eye on. She writes to her friend, quote, "I don't think he's dumb enough to ever do any physical harm,

Her friend replies, "It's sad that you even have to think that way."

Viviana says, "I know."

“Viviana seemed to have no illusions about her husband's capacity”

for anger and violence, but after his arrest, she threw her full support behind him, starting an online fundraiser for their legal bills, railing against her own mother and sister for talking to the police behind our backs,

accusing my husband, and talking to seemingly every media outlet she can get a hold of. And early on, the tack the couple takes is to put doubt not just on whether their baby has medical evidence of being shaken, but on whether or not such a diagnosis exists at all.

Jeremy's lawyer offers the police some medical literature casting doubt on the very existence of a abusive head trauma. To hear Viviana tell it, the problem isn't her violent husband. It's an affairs doctor who's out to get them for reasons.

Since 2016, I've been writing Sally Smith, a Christmas card with our family's picture on it. So she's reminded of a family that she tried to break apart, but didn't.

“Christmas card doesn't quite capture the spirit of these missiles,”

which include vitriolic notes from Viviana, and in one instance includes a collage of photos of Sally with comments mocking her appearance. In addition to sending her a yearly Christmas card, Viviana encouraged other members of the fractured family's group

to send their own, posting Dr. Smith's address and phone number online.

- It's interesting because they never have called

the top protection team to harass them. They always call my private practice that has nothing to do with anything that I did with the top protection team. It was actually a couple of years ago

that we got like thousands of calls at my office, which is people calling in about how can you work with this person and some of them just literally strings of explotives to the poor receptionist that picked up the phone. We would have 20 or 30 voice mails, again, just vitriol.

- Viviana paints a response that she received from Sally Smith one year as an admission that Sally had gotten her son's diagnosis wrong. - Dear Mr. and Mrs. Graham, I received your card again, and just wanted to say I'm sorry you're still so angry

about my part in the investigation regarding your son. There are definitely a disturbing number of abuse and neglected children and panelist county. I understand you feel very strongly that your son wasn't one of them. You mentioned in your note that (beep)

was found to have another diagnosis. And if you have a chance, I would very much like to hear what that was so I can consider it appropriately next time. I try very hard to be thorough and get it right. But perhaps I need to be careful to consider the gray areas.

“- But this read is missing some crucial context”

according to Sally. - Part of the reason I sent something back is to try to see if I could get her to stop. If she could tell me what the medical condition was that her son had, please let me know

because I'd like to consider that in other cases,

if something I've never heard of or don't know about.

- So indeed, what was this other medical condition the Viviana was claiming her son had? Here is what she told journalist Tracy Ortlieb from Parents Magazine. Quote, soon we had appointment scheduled

with multiple neurologists outside the Tampa Bay area. There findings that an extraordinarily large headed babies, the brain takes time in catching up to school growth and veins frequently rupture and re-ruption. This big head theory, the condition we spoke to Dr. Booze

about in the last episode, is a common defense tactic. And as Sally explains, this is something caps look for as a possible differential diagnosis. - So that is best described as benign enlargement of the sub-reactivate spaces.

And it is associated with large heads. I am very familiar with this phenomenon. As are the neurosurgeons at all children. And so the chance that that was the sole diagnosis. And I've had scenarios with that where I've said,

hey, this is the pattern, but this child has a big head. He had prominent sub-reactivate spaces. The little bit of hemorrhage associated with his fall off the couch and the skull fracture that he sustained is typical of benign enlargement of the sub-reactivate spaces.

Also known as benign macrocrania, big head. And that's a medical diagnosis that has a pattern of findings associated with it. And it's pretty straightforward whether a person has that or not.

- Viviana mentions in another post that she also took her son to see a geneticist to be tested for L.A.S. Danlos syndrome. A rare condition that many in the fractured family's group claim is frequently mistaken for abuse.

More on that later.

had no underlying medical problems.

“In my kicks and box piece about Viviana,”

he writes that doctors disagree about the diagnosis, but he leaves out which doctors. These names will be familiar to you from the last episode. As there are two of D.A. Matthew Torbinsons, so-called frequent flyers.

Dr. Julie Mack, a radiologist who mostly does mammography in addition to her defense expert work, and Dr. Joseph Schiller, who makes his living testifying for the defense in abuse cases, and on behalf of lead paint companies.

- I referred to them in the trial as frequent flyers in the courtroom and they create a courtroom controversy regarding the medical diagnosis, because in my mind, in the vast majority of the public, I don't think there's a controversy

about shaking baby syndrome or a abusive head trauma. Every single person is talked to about a abusive head trauma, she can baby syndrome when you are at the hospital and you're leaving with a newborn child. Everyone's educated about the dangers of it.

The only time that we hear there's a controversy is in the courtroom when someone's been charged with inflicting abusive head trauma, and there's defense experts, a small group of defense experts

that appear in testify. - Viviana claims in the press

“that she took her son to see specialists”

who ruled out child abuse, but according to her Facebook post,

she's never actually met Dr. Schiller.

She just sent him some medical records and a cat scan, and he wrote them a report for a fee of $1,500. - Nobody ever pays you back for all the money that you spend on lawyers and experts

and attorneys and you're going to debt. You know, we almost filed for bankruptcy, but this is crazy. - Like the other two families in this episode, Viviana and Jeremy eventually took a case plan

and the criminal charges against Jeremy were dropped. Despite his history of violence and Viviana's direct acknowledgement of the danger he posed to their kid, Viviana was hell bent on defending her husband,

and given that she was the only other adult in the timeline that makes prosecution tricky. Viviana remains very active online and continues to defend Jeremy and maintains that he was wrongfully accused,

although he is not, in fact, her husband anymore. Dr. Sally Smith stopped receiving the annual Christmas card admonishing her for trying to tear the family apart, because it turns out Jeremy did that all in his own.

By June of 2024, it would appear,

Viviana had finally had enough.

She filed for divorce and filed a domestic violence petition against Jeremy. The details of these filings are harrowing. Viviana describes Jeremy pawning off household items to support his addiction to crad 'em,

and over the counter-stimulate that is listed by the Mayo Clinic as unsafe and ineffective, that is frequently used by people going through opioid withdraws. Viviana recounts Jeremy ripping their security cameras out, destroying possessions and threatening her in front of their children.

She writes, "There is no peace in this house when he's home." And says that their nine-year-old is afraid of his father and wants him to stop pawning his things. Viviana writes that she fears for her kid's safety. They'd had two more by then.

In the court agreed, granting Viviana an emergency motion for sole custody, citing imminent risk of harm to her children. Viviana's filings include text messages from Jeremy where he burrates her and threatens to stop paying the mortgage and accuses her of cheating,

telling her quote, "I have spies everywhere." She includes call logs of him calling over and over again and receipts from the pawn shop. The ways in which domestic abuse and child abuse crossover are both extremely common and very nuanced,

and this connection shows up a lot in these stories. So, after all that, does Viviana see her interactions

“with Dr. Smith all those years ago a little differently?”

Evidently not. Viviana is still active in trying to drum caps out of their jobs, even speaking to Florida lawmakers. In Texas, recent media scrutiny has led some lawmakers to consider introducing a bill next year

that would require, in some cases,

the states seek an independent second opinion

before child is separated from their parents. That system, though, would provide the oversight accountability that parents deserve. Representative Eskamani believes the additional measure could make sense here in Florida.

Since we found these pediatricians who serve as the state's experts on abuse often answer to no one and operate independently from region to region. Any position of authority that is checked by something else is concerning.

Representative Anna Eskamani, who is interviewed in the segment, went on to co-sponsor House Bill 47, which references a similar bill in Arkansas, named Quincy's Law, and calls out similar alleged issues of false allegations surrounding conditions

like Ellers Danlos syndrome, osteogenesis imperfecta, rickets, and low vitamin D. There are also similar laws in Texas and Georgia. In February of this year, House Bill 47 passed the Florida House unanimously,

and will now go on to Governor Ron DeSantis. Viviana's case is over, and so is her marriage, but she remains dedicated to denying the existence of abuse of head trauma, and she appears to be in good company.

Viviana is one of the moderators

according to its website, quote, "Fractured families

“exist to protect and advocate for families”

falsely accused of child abuse due to unexplained fractures in their infants." Not only Viviana, but the majority of the families featured in Take Care of Maya, Ashley, Carly, Viviana, and a number of others

featured in brief segments during the credits, are members of this group. Produced her Caitlyn Keating and Viviana made context some time in 2020, and Viviana posts screenshots of her text message

with Keating to the group in July of that year. She includes Caitlyn's contact information

“and says other families should reach out if they're comfortable.”

The very first comment on this post is from my sister,

offering to talk to Keating about the medical child abuse angle. Raina Broward Tyson, one of the group's founders, who ends up appearing in the final sequence of Take Care of Maya, Caution's Viviana

about sharing screenshots from the group, and offers to create a mock post that could be shared with Keating instead. Fractured family's presence is felt, but not explicitly mentioned in Take Care of Maya.

Viviana posts a few follow-up messages from Keating in the group.

“Caitlyn Keating was clearly very interested in this group”

and it's going on, and asks a couple of times about getting a behind-the-scenes peek into what they discuss. It doesn't appear that they ever did show her, and I think I can guess why. Which brings me to a question I've wondered all along

about Caitlyn Keating. Does she really understand who she's platforming? David Ayub, who used to be really active in the anti-vaccine movement, and is now a shaken baby denialist?

That's next time on Nobody Should Believe Me. Nobody Should Believe Me is written, reported, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dumla. Our co-executive producer is Maria Gosset. Our editor is Greta Stromquist,

story editing by Nicole Hill, research and fact checking by Erin Agai, additional research by Jessa V. Randall, mixing and engineering by Robin Edgar. Our production manager is Nola Kermish,

music from blue dot sessions, sound snap, and slipstream. (gentle music) - I'm Teresa, and my experiences at all entrepreneurs started with Shopify erfolgreich through.

I'm sure Shopify is already the first day,

and the platform makes me no problem. I have a lot of problems, but the platform is not one of them. I have the feeling that Shopify has its platform continually optimized.

Everything is super-integre and verlink-bar. And the time and the money that I can't understand, I can't invest in it. For all in-wax.