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- [00:00]
Rachel Martin
This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. As a listener of the Daily we know you want the facts. Fact 1 Lawmakers are making it harder for Americans to get health care.
- [00:10]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
2.
- [00:11]
Rachel Martin
A new policy blocks patients from using their Medicaid insurance for life saving care at Planned Parenthood health centers. Cancers will go undetected, STIs will go untreated, and patients won't have the care they need. 3. Planned Parenthood will not back down, but they need your help. Don't donate@plannedparenthood.org defend hey everyone, it's Rachel. We're doing something a little different today. We're gonna take a pause this week from the culture specials that we've been sharing on Sundays because today we wanted to share the first episode of a new series from our colleagues over at Cereal. It's called the Preventionist. Like so many of their shows, it's a remarkable story. This one is about a bunch of things including families navigating surprising and enormous challenges and a public official who's trying to do the right thing in a very complicated situation. It's really good. The episode we're sharing today is the first of a three part series which you can find by searching the Preventionist wherever you get your podcasts. And take note, the whole series is available for free for a limited time, so binge away. Okay, so the Sunday Special team will be back with the show next week and here is the the first episode of the Preventionist.
- [01:27]
Diane Neary
One evening in August of 2023, I watched a woman step up to the mic during a meeting of local government officials in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She was young, early twenties, strikingly pretty, wearing a pale pink blazer. She's short, five foot nothing, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the microphone. She had five minutes to convey basically any parent's nightmare.
- [01:53]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
My two month old son was happily drinking milk from his bottle when he quickly started choking, turned blue and went limp. My boyfriend transported our son to the changing table as I grabbed an anti choking device and my boyfriend began assembling it. I never ran so fast up the stairs screaming at the top of my lungs for help.
- [02:09]
Diane Neary
She described the panic in the house, a baby not breathing. She and her boyfriend, father of the child, lived with her parents. Everyone was home when the baby started choking.
- [02:21]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
My father rushed downstairs and immediately started doing chest compressions as I dialed911. Two pumps of the device and my son was conscious, gasping for air and coughing up milk.
- [02:31]
Diane Neary
It worked. Thank God. They thought they were relieved, but Rattled, they wanted to make sure the baby was okay. So they sent him to the error.
- [02:40]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
We saved his life that night. But upon arriving at Lehigh Valley Hospital, the diagnosis quickly became something so different, something nobody could have ever prepared me for.
- [02:51]
Diane Neary
A lot can be said in five minutes, it turns out, and she still had four to go. She described how the whole family went to the hospital, she and her boyfriend, her parents, later, his parents too. But after their baby was examined, she and her boyfriend were asked to leave because it turned out one of the doctors had a theory.
- [03:12]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
She stated to my father and mother in law that we are young first time parents who got frustrated with our baby and violently shook him to make him stop crying. And a confession would only make things easier for us.
- [03:23]
Diane Neary
Their story about the milk and the choking and the life saving device, the hospital was saying that's a lie and that these young parents should just admit that they'd lost their patients and shaken the baby hard. They were told to leave the hospital without their baby and he wouldn't come home for seven whole months.
- [03:42]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
I'm a 21 year old mother who lost seven months with her firstborn son. I'm a nursing mother who lost her milk because she wasn't allowed to feed her baby. I'm a first time mom who watched her child, her first child meet milestones over facetime. I'm a postpartum mom dealing with the grief and the trauma of my son being ripped from my arms. I'm a concerned mother in a hospital looking for help. But instead we were treated like criminals. And I'm a mom who lost everything in less than 24 hours due to one doctor's misdiagnosis. Enough is enough.
- [04:22]
Diane Neary
This wasn't my first time hearing a story like this. I've been reporting for a few years on the child welfare system and I've written about similar situations. Parents who say they were falsely accused of abuse, that their kids were taken from them without cause. In 2023, I got a series of emails from people in the Lehigh Valley, a part of eastern Pennsylvania north of Philadelphia where small towns bleed into rural pastures. I got phone calls from people there too. One person said, essentially, if you think that last story you wrote was bad, you won't believe what's happening in the Lehigh Valley. So I started looking into it, which is how I ended up at this public meeting hearing about a baby who choked on milk and was taken away from his parents for most of his infancy. And now, after two years of talking to families and medical personnel and caseworkers, I can tell you that caller was right. Whatever was happening in the Lehigh Valley, it was not normal. I'm Diane Neary and from Serial Productions and the New York Times, this is the Preventionist introducing Genius bank, the award winning bank that does things differently for our kind of genius spelled with a J. Award winning can mean many things like most locations. But who still goes to the bank for us? Award winning means best Newcomer bank of 2025 by Bank Rate. Visit geniusbank.com Genius Genius with a J Genius bank registered trademark is a division of SMBC MANU bank member fdic. Awards are independently granted by their respective publication and are not indicative of future success or results.
- [06:06]
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- [07:11]
Diane Neary
How this extraordinary situation in the Lehigh Valley came to light in the first place. Because it almost didn't. Except that this one guy would not let it go. His name is Mark Pinsley, and he's not an activist or a medical expert or an aggrieved parent. He's a controller. A money guy. I barely knew what a controller was until I met Mark. Mark barely knew what that was. Before he became one, he'd run for state Senate on the Democratic ticket in Pennsylvania and lost.
- [07:40]
Mark Pinsley
And when I came off that loss, the party came to me again and said, hey, would you like to be controller of Lehigh County? And I was like, what is comptroller of Lehigh County? So I really had no idea.
- [07:52]
Diane Neary
Mark learned a controller is in charge of auditing the county's finances, making sure there's no fraud, no waste of taxpayer money. Mark had studied finance and he'd manage budgets for both big and small companies. He still Owns a small skincare business. It seemed like a good fit.
- [08:09]
Mark Pinsley
So that's what I did. I ran and I won controller. And my goal was to figure out how I could help the people using that position and being creative around financing.
- [08:19]
Diane Neary
Mark's an ambitious guy. He wanted to use his skills to do more than just audit the county's payroll. And he was good at it. In his first few years, he investigated a big pharmaceutical company that was overcharging for prescription drugs. And he discovered a county nursing home had failed to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars. His audits have saved the county and its taxpayers millions. To hear Mark tell it, the idea for his next big project kind of came out of left field. One day, he and his wife were out grocery shopping.
- [08:50]
Mark Pinsley
I hate waiting in lines. And my wife was in where we were in line to, you know, pay for groceries. And I'm like, I'm just gonna go watch TikTok. And so I was watching TikTok, you know, just kind of wasting time, scrolling away. And a video came up.
- [09:10]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
Your favorite author here speaking to tell you about a complete win.
- [09:15]
Diane Neary
A week ago, Mark almost swiped away because for one, his favorite author is Stephen King. And this woman, he didn't even know who she was, but he lingered.
- [09:26]
Mark Pinsley
And then she said allentown. And like, so then I paid attention. And then she said children and youth, and I was paying more attention.
- [09:33]
Diane Neary
Allentown is in Lehigh county, and the office of children and youth services is a county agency. In other words, Mark's territory. And the woman talking in the video was not only an author, she was a lawyer who'd represented a couple in a year long fight against the false accusation made by a local hospital of child abuse. They'd won. The county had withdrawn its petition to remove the couple's child. Mark wondered if the county was wasting time on losing fights. It might also be wasting money in the process.
- [10:05]
Mark Pinsley
But I'm like, there might be money there. Let me go find out. And so like, I immediately emailed right away.
- [10:13]
Diane Neary
He wrote to the couple mentioned in the TikTok saying he wanted to understand more about what had happened. He wrote, quote, to be upfront, I have always had a good feeling about the people that work for children and youth. I have felt that they were overworked and underpaid, end quote.
- [10:28]
Mark Pinsley
But he said, if you are willing to share more, I am willing to listen. Thank you for your time, Mark. And then by the time I was done emailing, I helped starting to unload the groceries.
- [10:38]
Diane Neary
Within 24 hours, the couple wrote back. Mark Set up his conference room for a video call with the mother and the lawyer. And on his screen, he saw their faces pop up.
- [10:48]
Mark Pinsley
They walked me through, like, the basics. I mean, it was more than just the basics, but, you know, it was an hour and a half phone call. The mom did most of the speaking.
- [10:58]
Diane Neary
She told Mark about how both her boys had complex medical needs. One had autism and an autoimmune disorder. The other had autism and a metabolic disorder. She said she and her husband had spent years working hard to find their boys the right therapists and treatments, medicines and vitamins and supplements to get them stable. And by her account, they mostly succeeded. But then one day, one of their boys started to behave erratically. They took him to the Lehigh Valley Children's Hospital in Allentown, where the mom said a doctor puzzled over the case and what seemed like too many interventions for the boys. She said that without ever meeting with her or her husband, the doctor diagnosed Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological disorder in which a parent fakes their child's illnesses for attention or even intentionally hurts them and then seeks treatment for those injuries. It's a popular storyline in movies, but in reality, it's a rare condition. In this case, the mom said both she and her husband were accused of having it, and both of them were barred from seeing their son. The hospital declined my interview requests for this series, but in an email, a representative wrote, quote, we feel strongly that Lehigh Valley Health Network has done nothing wrong and that the good doctors and nurses working at this hospital have actually done a good thing. They have taken steps to protect against child abuse, which are legally required under Pennsylvania law. End quote. In the video call, the mother and her lawyer explained to Mark that the child abuse accusation progressed quickly from the hospital to an investigation by children and youth to family court. The parents lost custody of their younger son for a month, their older son for a year.
- [12:50]
Mark Pinsley
And so it was a very emotional story. Like, you can't come away as a parent and be like, well, hey, who cares? At first, I just thought that, like, this is two unfortunate souls. So the husband and the wife got caught up in something. And then I started looking in, and it just became very quickly apparent that there was a problem.
- [13:12]
Diane Neary
Very quickly, this family knew of other families whom they put in touch with. Mark, he made a spreadsheet assigning each family a color so he could keep track. The green family, the blue family, the couple he just talked to were the gray family. He knew he couldn't take their stories at face value, so he started fact checking Them, which he hated. It was awkward to ask people for proof, documentation, but they produced it, and then he had to read that documentation. Medical paperwork and child welfare reports, hundreds of pages.
- [13:45]
Mark Pinsley
And I was a neophyte about this when I started too, right? So, like, I didn't know what certain terms meant. And so in the beginning, I'm like, writing down the terms, like, so that I would remember them. And so many times I would have to go back later and reread a section, and it had a whole new meaning to me.
- [14:01]
Diane Neary
He searched Google, got some help from someone on his staff.
- [14:04]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
He.
- [14:05]
Diane Neary
He began to decipher the system. He learned that in Lehigh county, if a parent is suspected of child abuse, in this case, suspected by a doctor at the hospital, that doctor calls the state child abuse hotline. An operator there takes down the report and sends it to children and Youth services, known as CYS. And then CYS has two months to make a determination.
- [14:27]
Mark Pinsley
You have 60 days as a caseworker to decide whether something is unfounded, meaning we really don't suspect child abuse at all. Indicated, which is supposed to mean that there's a lot of evidence that kind of makes it suspicious that you might well be a child abuser or a.
- [14:44]
Diane Neary
Third category founded, meaning that both CYS and a court have found that you're an abuser. There was one more term Mark had never heard before, which kept popping up in the paperwork. Child abuse pediatrician. Mark realized almost all of the allegations in the family's files had been made by this kind of doctor. A child abuse pediatrician. CAP for short. More googling. And Mark learned this CAPs are doctors who are trained specifically in how to tell whether an injury is the result of abuse, to tell the difference, say, between an arm broken by falling off the swing set or versus an arm broken after being twisted by force. They often work in children's hospitals, including Lehigh Valley's Children's Hospital, and they play a crucial role in keeping children safe. According to the most recent government data, every year, more than 3 million children in the US are victims of suspected abuse. CAPs help figure out which of those children need protecting. The stakes are obviously high. In 2023, about 2,000 children died from abuse or neglect. Mark was noticing, reading the family's files, how much influence a cap's opinion carried, which made sense to Mark. After all, the capps are the medically trained experts. But then again, what happened if the cap got it wrong? In the case histories he was reading, there were examples of that happening. The file he'd labeled the yellow Family.
- [16:15]
Mark Pinsley
For instance, this mom had talked to me about, like, and she was a nurse. So she had talked to me about this case where she.
- [16:23]
Jeff Brace
She.
- [16:23]
Mark Pinsley
Her husband called her and said that the child wasn't able to sit up.
- [16:30]
Diane Neary
This was the kid who could normally sit up. He was 18 months old. And the husband said he had fallen off the couch while playing with his siblings. The next morning, he seemed hurt and couldn't sit up without falling backwards.
- [16:43]
Mark Pinsley
So she calls her pediatrician. The pediatrician says, take them to the hospital. And in this particular instance, there was a fracture of the ribs. I think it was two fractures of the ribs that were healing.
- [16:54]
Diane Neary
Further testing revealed the child had a total of four broken ribs in various stages of healing, as in fractures that could not have all happened that day by, say, falling off the couch. The story the parents had told didn't match the injuries doctors were seeing.
- [17:10]
Mark Pinsley
So this one was a harder one for me because the child had broken bones, right? And you're like, okay, well, like, this one seems a little off.
- [17:18]
Diane Neary
The doctor, a cap, was suspicious of the father. Fractures at various stages of healing could point toward a pattern of injury. And the father was the one who claimed the child had fallen.
- [17:29]
Mark Pinsley
And the mom was just, like. She was adamant, like, the father didn't do this. You know, like, there's no way. You know, it took us a long time to get pregnant, all that kind of stuff.
- [17:38]
Diane Neary
The mom was a nurse, and she started her own research. What else could explain the injuries? A genetic condition, maybe. Meanwhile, the cap in this case was firm in her finding of abuse. According to the mom, the doctor even suggested the unthinkable that she leave her husband, take the children, and, quote, never look back. The mom said cys, quote, badgered her to file for divorce in order to keep her children.
- [18:08]
Mark Pinsley
And eventually she actually got a divorce. And I would have done the same thing, right? Even though, like, my gut instinct is, like, I'm not going to let this happen. Well, there's no way I'm going to let this happen to my kid. And the mother was like, no. Like, I just don't believe it. I believe there's, like, something genetic going on. I believe this. The husband or the former husband. Now she divorces him, right? Goes to jail. And in the meantime, the mother keeps working. She can't get a genetic test for whatever it was. Two and a half months.
- [18:37]
Diane Neary
When she finally did get a genetic test at a different hospital, a diagnosis came back. Type 1 osteogenesis imperfecta.
- [18:46]
Mark Pinsley
And wouldn't you believe it? The child has brittle bone disease.
- [18:49]
Diane Neary
That same day, her now ex husband was released from jail. And one month later, all the criminal charges against him were dropped.
- [18:57]
Mark Pinsley
Like, I can't stand it.
- [19:01]
Diane Neary
Mark had interviewed more than a dozen families by this point, and he'd reached his limit.
- [19:06]
Mark Pinsley
Like, I can't live knowing that America is like that or that Pennsylvania is like that. Like, I have to do something about it.
- [19:15]
Diane Neary
A reminder, Mark is a controller. He has zero oversight of child welfare services. He can't intervene in CYS procedures. He can't dictate hospital policy. But what he can do is look at the money, find out what all this was costing the county, and he could make that public. He could write a report that might put pressure on the people who could change policy at cys, the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners. Mark started tallying up the costs. Caseworkers, attorneys, judges. The county pays for their time. The county pays for foster care and for mandated psychological evaluations. When a judge orders parents and kids to do therapy, the county pays for that, too. If the abuse allegation turned out to be wrong, that seemed like financial waste to Mark. He was on a tear now, thinking about these families, I mean, as I.
- [20:08]
Mark Pinsley
Learned more stories, I couldn't sleep at night for two reasons. A, I knew that I'm putting them through their trauma again. And B, I actually now believe them. And I'm like, you know, I can't get this report done fast enough. Like, I literally can't get this report done fast enough. I am like, now I'm waking up at six o' clock in the morning, starting to write the report. I'm not going to bed until midnight to get this report out.
- [20:31]
Diane Neary
Apart from the money, Mark also crunched the state's annual data on child abuse allegations and what he saw when he compared the Lehigh Valley to the rest of the state, which striking a third of the state's cases of Munchausen by proxy. A third of those diagnoses in all of Pennsylvania had come from the Lehigh Valley region. The numbers were small overall, but still, that high percentage made no sense to him, especially since the region is home to just 3% of the state's under 18 population.
- [21:02]
Mark Pinsley
So something's not right. There's a problem. I start contacting all of the commissioners. I'm calling each one of them. Like, I really want you to take a listen to this. Are you willing to talk to families?
- [21:16]
Diane Neary
He contacted each of them repeatedly, trying to set up meetings. Most of the commissioners avoided him. Some agreed to talk. He said he told them about the Crazy high Munchausen stat. And that if Munchausen syndrome was being misdiagnosed, he thought there was certainly cause to investigate that. And all of it, aside from being wrong and damaging to families, could open up the county to lawsuits. Since CYS is the agency responsible for removing the kids, Mark says some of them were willing to listen, but none was willing to take action. He even offered to put them directly in touch with some of the families. They declined. On top of that, Mark says he contacted the county directors of CYS and the Department of Human Services. I contacted county officials, including the chair of the commissioners, to hear their version of events. In response, I received an email from the county's attorney saying that unfortunately they couldn't discuss any matters involving the Office of Children and Youth due to legal concerns. Ditto the county directors of CYS and the Department of Human Services. Mark knew that publishing a report had the potential to tank his career. It was an election year, and to voters, it might look like he was being an apologist for child abusers. Members of his own staff suggested he wait until after the election to release it. But Mark thought about how he'd feel if he held off and then wasn't reelected. He would have missed his chance to speak up. So he pushed ahead. He gave the county leadership a heads up the report was coming along with a press conference. He also gave them advance notice of his recommendations for changes he hoped they'd make at cys. Chiefly require caseworkers to get a second opinion from a doctor when considering whether to remove a child based on a medical finding. And he wanted them to hire an outside firm to investigate CYS procedures. Before he published his report, Mark had a few questions for the solicitors, the county's lawyers, his lawyers, in a way, since he was a county official too. He had all these records containing sensitive information about kids, medical issues and family court proceedings. So he asked them what could he legally include in a public facing report. When the response came back, it was short. Basically two words, see attached.
- [23:44]
Mark Pinsley
So when you see it's a PDF attachment, you know it's going to be long.
- [23:47]
Diane Neary
Mark didn't have a great feeling about this. He made a cup of tea, printed the PDF and settled down to read it. That's after a break.
- [24:08]
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- [24:39]
Rachel Martin
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- [24:41]
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- [25:11]
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- [25:46]
Diane Neary
The PDF from the solicitors was long. It was on county letterhead, and the subtext, to Mark at least, was clear. His report was dead on arrival. One of the first lines of it.
- [25:57]
Mark Pinsley
Read, the most significant overarching concern is whether your pursuit of this information for the reasons you have stated goes beyond the scope of your authority as the controller.
- [26:09]
Diane Neary
The solicitors were saying. Documenting, really, that if Mark were to publish this report, he might be acting beyond his authority as comptroller and he might get the county sued by a behemoth health network, perhaps, which happens to be the region's largest employer, or by a doctor who was named in the report. Or Mark himself might get sued personally and then he'd be on his own.
- [26:31]
Mark Pinsley
This was just like, hey, you're going to get us sued and you're going to get sued and maybe other people are going to be sued. That's what this was. And we're telling you in order to scare the shit out of you. That's what they're doing.
- [26:42]
Diane Neary
Were you scared?
- [26:44]
Mark Pinsley
Hell yeah.
- [26:45]
Diane Neary
It sounds antagonistic. I would be terrified if I had an attorney.
- [26:49]
Mark Pinsley
And that's what they sent you? That's how you. That's how I knew immediately. He's no longer my attorney. Right. Like as soon as you read this, you're like, they are not going to help me and they are going to throw me under the bus like, you just don't put this kind of stuff in writing unless you're covering your ass.
- [27:11]
Diane Neary
I confess, I can halfway see the county's argument here. After all, Mark's report, titled the cost of misdiagnosis, was actually pretty mushy regarding the county's financial burden due to misdiagnosed child abuse cases. He'd calculated it as anywhere from 25 to $30,000 a year for each kid in foster care to untold millions of dollars on the high end if the county were to get sued by the families. Not exactly conclusive. And it was true. He was using the finances as a way to talk about a different, bigger problem. But he saw nothing wrong with that. He was, in his own words, a bulldog of a controller. He firmly believed he was within his purview. A week later, two things happened. First, Mark heard from the county's lawyer again. He wanted to make sure Mark understood that his staff could also be held liable. Mark was, like, noted. And then Mark got a separate call from a member of his staff saying someone from the county's finance department had just stopped by. Mark's budget was being cut. He would have to lose two employees, 25% of his staff, effective in four months time. Mark was appalled. The controller's staff hadn't been cut in years. This can't be a coincidence, he thought. The next day, Mark called his staff into a conference room. He tried to comfort them as he broke the news.
- [28:37]
Mark Pinsley
We're sitting down the next day. My employees, they're learning that their jobs are going to be cut. They're learning that they might get sued. And I'm trying to say to them, don't worry. Everything's going to be all right. And they're pretty worried. And I get it, because I'm not worried either. I'm pretty worried at this point.
- [29:00]
Diane Neary
Were you considering, like, maybe I shouldn't do this? Is it worth it?
- [29:04]
Mark Pinsley
Oh, yeah. I didn't know what to do.
- [29:07]
Diane Neary
Mark says the meeting was long and heated. The staff was only eight people total, and they urged him not to publish the report. One of them argued, look, if it's our jobs or the report, you gotta choose us, right? But Mark felt like I wasn't elected to protect your jobs. Then again, you don't deserve to be booted over this. Finally, after a couple emotional hours, he conceded on one condition. He'd talk to the families, and if they were okay with it, he'd pull the report. And so that's what he did.
- [29:40]
Mark Pinsley
And so, you know, I then call the Solicitor's office of the county. And I say, everything's off. We're not going to have the press conference. We're not. Not going to bring the families in. Everything. You guys won. I. I literally see it say, you guys can pop the champagne. You won. So I come in the next day and I am like, you know, eyes are red. Not from being tired, but from being pissed. Right. Like, I am just mad. And so I go up to this particular person in the finance department, Mark. It's okay. They put the two positions back.
- [30:27]
Diane Neary
Wow.
- [30:28]
Mark Pinsley
Yeah. I expected it.
- [30:32]
Diane Neary
You expected it? So did it confirm in your mind that this was a direct response?
- [30:38]
Mark Pinsley
Yep. Yeah.
- [30:40]
Diane Neary
How did you feel?
- [30:43]
Mark Pinsley
I. I felt two things. Relief. I felt relief. That was probably the biggest feeling I felt because I did not want to screw these two employees. And, like, I'm gonna have to be mad later, right? Like, I. I knew that I was gonna be pissed, you know, Like, I knew, like. Like this just felt so wrong. It felt like I wanted to take a shower kind of wrong. But I was just relieved, you know? And I. That afternoon, I told all the employees, like, the budget's back.
- [31:18]
Diane Neary
I did check with the county on all this. And the county executive who oversees its finance department said staff cuts were being considered in many departments that year. And Mark's department was among them. Yes, but those cuts were never formally proposed, and they weren't retaliatory. With no staffing cuts on the line, Mark had a new choice to make. He could bury his report in a drawer and keep his head down, or he could ignore the county's advice and go ahead and release it. He decided to hire a lawyer. Friend asked him to pore over the document and advise him on the risk. The lawyer told Mark to cut the names of the doctors, cut any mention of Lehigh Valley health network. The 50 page draft shrank by 11 pages. Mark got his staff's approval to release the new version, but he didn't want to publish it until the budget actually went to print. He was paranoid by this point, maybe, or smart. The county budget is like a physical book. Once it was printed, Mark knew the commissioners wouldn't cut his budget because if they did, the public might interpret the move as punitive, since the original number was right there in the budget book in black and white.
- [32:29]
Mark Pinsley
And every day I called the finance department. Has it gone to print yet? Has it gone to print yet? Has it gone to print yet? And Wednesday morning, it went to print. I saw. I literally saw the woman leave with the flash drive to go get it to print to the printer. And I called the solicitor. I'm like, I just want you to know the report's going out today, and there's going to be a press conference, and we're coming to the commissioners meeting tonight. And he's like, don't do it. Like, don't put it out. And I'm like, no, we're putting it out.
- [33:02]
Diane Neary
Mark published his report to the county website on a Wednesday morning, issued a press release, and immediately got to work coordinating with the families. The commissioner's meeting was that same night, and all these families had to get ready fast. The yellow family, who had the baby with brittle bone disease. The gray family, who had been accused of Munchausen. The blue family, the orange family. All these people Mark had spoken to privately. He'd been encouraging them all along to tell their stories, but he knew it was a big ask.
- [33:33]
Mark Pinsley
And so they. I can't imagine what it was like being on their end, but I can imagine there's a lot of conversation going on about, like, do we really want to do this? Like, our neighbors don't know right now. Right? Our neighbors don't know that we're considered child abusers. Our only. Our closest friends and family know. And we are now going to announce this to the world. And then that night, you saw, like, there was a line that went from. I mean, like, you don't get the picture of this, you know, without seeing it, but there was a line that went from the door out to the street. And that is not a short amount of people. That's a lot of people. To make that happen.
- [34:10]
Diane Neary
Close to 100 people had shown up.
- [34:12]
Mark Pinsley
It was unbelievable. It just. I can't even describe what the feeling was because it's like you don't even know how to feel. Do you feel happy or do you feel really sad?
- [34:22]
Jeff Brace
I'm going to call this meeting of the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners to order.
- [34:26]
Diane Neary
As a reminder, Mark stood against the wall close to the door in view of both the families lined up at the lectern and the commissioners at the front of the room. The commissioners who up to now hadn't pledged to take action, hadn't responded to his report, who hadn't wanted to meet with the families. Now Mark hoped they'd have to engage. They'd see these people, hear these people, and maybe they'd be moved. Obviously, they weren't going to fix the problem on the spot, but maybe they'd feel compelled to say something meaningful, and then maybe down the line, they'd do something meaningful.
- [35:01]
Jeff Brace
Would everybody please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
- [35:10]
Diane Neary
About a dozen people headed straight to the lectern to form a line behind the microphone. They were holding pieces of paper with notes, prepared statements. They looked serious, a little nervous.
- [35:22]
Jeff Brace
Before I open the floor to citizens input, a couple of housekeeping rules related to citizens input.
- [35:29]
Diane Neary
He says everyone can have five minutes to talk about non agenda items. They begin.
- [35:35]
Jeff Brace
Hi, I'm speaking on behalf of my wife and myself.
- [35:39]
Diane Neary
One man says he and his wife brought their baby daughter to the hospital because of a scary incident when she'd stopped breathing.
- [35:46]
Jeff Brace
Instead of looking into the issues our daughter was having that led us to the hospital in the first place, they saw a small bruise and immediately wanted to paint a picture. She accused me of abusing our daughter without even talking to me. Our daughter was ripped from a loving family. We were escorted out by both the Lehigh Valley security guards and Salisbury Township police officers.
- [36:14]
Diane Neary
Another father heads to the mic.
- [36:17]
Mark Pinsley
Our son was taken to the hospital. Our 11 year old autistic son did not see a family member for over.
- [36:23]
Jeff Brace
A week and spent his favorite holiday.
- [36:25]
Mark Pinsley
In a hospital room. We lost custody of our son for.
- [36:29]
Jeff Brace
Four months with no investigation. A woman who had never met us.
- [36:32]
Mark Pinsley
Or our son simply decided that he fit her criteria.
- [36:36]
Diane Neary
One after the other they talk about their confusion, about how they still can't really understand what happened, about the astonishment for some of them of receiving a Munchausen by proxy diagnosis.
- [36:48]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
We were immediately banned from the hospital and accused over a weekend of suffering from a psychological disorder by doctors who never met us, expert physicians, multiple psychologists, teachers and school staff. Over 15 witnesses tried to get a hold of CYS to dispute allegations, but none of it mattered. There is no investigation. To this day we have never had contact with our son again.
- [37:17]
Diane Neary
The speakers represent 13 families accused of abuse. Their stories are both super specific and part of a pattern of parents walking into a Lehigh Valley hospital to get help for a child only to leave without them. It's overwhelming.
- [37:33]
Mark Pinsley
In my opinion. If you are taking your child to Lehigh Valley Hospital, you are putting your child and family in danger.
- [37:39]
Diane Neary
I brought my child to the ER.
- [37:41]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
For complaints of pain and difficulty sitting.
- [37:43]
Jeff Brace
Up socks and I slipped on the stairs and I dropped my daughter on the hard wooden stairs. Our child is 3 months old, 13.
- [37:50]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
Years old, 12 year old and 17 year old.
- [37:52]
Diane Neary
Daughter's almost 4 month old son 2 months old, my 7 week old.
- [37:55]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
We took our oldest child to the emergency room at Lehigh Valley Hospital for.
- [37:59]
Mark Pinsley
Help and for seven days, without our permission or a legal proceeding, my wife and I were banned from entering the hospital or communicating with our son.
- [38:08]
Jeff Brace
I expected them to ask me questions. I expected to be under the microscope a little bit, but I didn't expect it to progress that quickly.
- [38:14]
Diane Neary
This is abuse.
- [38:17]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
We are traumatized. We are afraid of doctors now. I'm afraid of doctors now. We still have a lot of sleepless nights.
- [38:23]
Jeff Brace
You try to push it to the.
- [38:25]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
Back of your mind, but the awfulness.
- [38:26]
Diane Neary
Of what happened is always there. For me personally, it's about the shame.
- [38:32]
Parents Sharing Their Stories
It's unimaginable to be wrongfully accused of child abuse.
- [38:39]
Diane Neary
For all of us, a lot of.
- [38:40]
Jeff Brace
The damage is already done in the long run. The children wound up home, but also wound up kind of broken.
- [38:55]
Diane Neary
The testimony goes on for two hours. Several of the commissioners seem to be listening closely. Others seem maybe a little uncomfortable looking down at the desk or at their laptops. And then it's over and the room gets quiet. Mark already knew a lot of what the families were going to say, so what he most wants to hear now is how the commissioners are going to respond.
- [39:22]
Jeff Brace
All right, so I have a couple of brief statements.
- [39:27]
Diane Neary
This is Jeff Brace, chairman of the Board of Commissioners.
- [39:32]
Jeff Brace
The general statement that I'd like to make is that the county of Lehigh has a legal and moral obligation to investigate every allegation of child abuse brought forward to county personnel and agencies. I don't think anybody in the room disagrees with that, and I think we will continue to make sure that happens.
- [39:56]
Diane Neary
Nonetheless, a couple other commissioners respond as well. They have kids themselves. They say they can't imagine the trauma these parents have endured. One says her heart is, quote, absolutely broken hearing about it, but they don't go further than that. They don't say a word about any of the changes Mark recommended, including his main one requiring a second opinion from a doctor if a child is going to be removed from their home based on a medical finding. At one point, Jeff Brace, the chairman, says that Mark should have sent his report to the state's Department of Human Services, which sets a lot of child welfare policy. Mark pipes up, he did send it.
- [40:38]
Mark Pinsley
Pardon? It's been sent. Thank you, Jeff.
- [40:40]
Jeff Brace
Great.
- [40:41]
Diane Neary
The state already has it.
- [40:43]
Jeff Brace
I'll make sure that it's in her hands. Also.
- [40:47]
Diane Neary
He also makes a point of saying he never tells anyone how to do their job, including Mark. The whole thing is brief, tense, weird.
- [40:57]
Jeff Brace
Jeff Brace concludes, nonetheless, I share your agreement, share your sentiments. That wraps up my comments. Anybody else?
- [41:14]
Mark Pinsley
Did he say I'M sorry for what happened. He read a pre canned speech that said, hey, I just want to let you know, if you guys get reported as child abusers, we have to investigate you. You guys get that, right? Yeah, we get it right. There wasn't anybody in the audience that was saying, hey, we're upset that we were investigated. They were saying, we're upset with what the process is going forward. I mean, it was a nothing comment. It had been vetted, obviously by. It sounded to me like it had been vetted by a lawyer. It was. And it basically said fuck you to all the families. That's how I felt. And I don't curse very often.
- [41:57]
Diane Neary
After the meeting, we filed into the hallway a little stunned. The conventional wisdom in child welfare is that lots of child abuse goes unreported, Mark. And these families were not challenging that wisdom. Instead, they were bringing up a different problem. Here in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, they were describing a crisis of over reporting, of over intervention, of false accusation. For my part, I had never heard of so many families from one small place all claiming that one healthcare network had misdiagnosed their kids with disastrous results. Mark's report and his recommendations. They were about investigating and reforming what looked like systemic problems within the hospital and cys, which sure, of course, on the other hand, I just heard testimonies by so many people, all mentioning this one doctor, someone they couldn't seem to get through to. It was as if we were invisible. We had to leave my grandson and could not be around him because of this doctor's uncontested diagnosis. In this grandmother's story, in all these stories, it sounded as if this doctor had made up her mind and wouldn't budge. I ask you, what kind of doctor does this? That's what I wanted to know, too. Next time the Preventionist is hosted, written and reported by me, Diane Neary. Additional reporting by Ben Phelan and Janelle Pifer. It's produced by Janelle Pifer and edited by Jen Guerra. Additional editing by Sarah Koenig and Anita Batijo. Fact checking by Elizabeth Barber and Ben Phelan. Additional fact checking by Caitlin Love. For more reporting from the show, sign up for our newsletter@nytimes.com serialnewsletter. Music supervision and mixing by Phoebe Wilson Wang. Additional mixing by Katherine Anderson. Sound design by Jonathan Menhivar and Phoebe Wang. Original music by Martin D. Fowler, Dan Powell and Marian Lozano. Martin D. Fowler composed our theme song. Our standards editor is Susan Wessling. Legal review from Dana Greene. The art for our show comes from Aimee Hunt and Pablo Del Can. The supervising producer for Serial Productions is Ende Chubu. Julie Snyder is Serial's Executive editor. Our Associate producer is Mac Miller. Additional producing comes from Nina Lassom and Corey beach at the New York Times, and Sam Dolnick is the New York Times Deputy Managing Editor. The Preventionist is a production of Serial Productions and the New York Times.
- [44:59]
Rachel Martin
This podcast is supported by bank of America Private Bank.
- [45:02]
Bank of America Announcer
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