Gone without a Warrant

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He says, Sarah, there's a real possibility that they could be trying to take Cal today.

You need to get out of the hospital.

Do whatever you can to leave the hospital.

Welcome to The Knife.

I'm Hannah Smith.

I'm Patia Eaton.

Today we're speaking with Sarah Perkins, and we'll also hear from her husband, Josh Saby, but he had to leave the room a little early on in the interview to watch over their children.

In July of 2022, Sarah and Josh had a new baby, and he came down with a fever.

So they took him to the ER, but a hospital visit that began with concern over a fever ended up turning into a nightmare.

It would involve the Department of Children and Family, law enforcement, and attorneys.

And at the center of all of this was Sarah and Josh, two loving parents who were suddenly on the defensive.

As a quick note, in the beginning, Josh and Sarah have their baby with them in the room, so you might hear the baby in the background briefly.

Let's get into the interview.

I'm Sarah Perkins.

I grew up in Texas outside of Dallas, and I ended up meeting Josh at university and got married while we were still in our undergraduate degrees.

And then we finished school and ended up moving out east for other schooling.

I got my master's degree in North Carolina and then I got my doctoral degree in Boston.

What were you looking forward to most about being parent?

Were you always wanting to have a family?

Yeah.

I remember feeling apprehensive about being a parent.

You know, it's just, it's such a a huge responsibility.

And I was anxious about meeting that responsibility.

It's scary to commit yourself for the rest of forever to that, you know?

And then it was actually sort of hard for us to get pregnant initially.

I had a fertility condition and so it took a little over a year of trying before we were able to conceive.

And we ended up losing that first pregnancy.

around 13 weeks.

And I think that was when I realized how badly I actually did want to be a parent.

You know, that was when it really hit home, how much I wanted a child.

I found out I was pregnant with our oldest boy the day I got back home from touring PhD campuses.

And so it was this moment of like, okay,

how are we going to do this?

What is the rest of these next several years going to look like?

But I felt very confident in my partner.

Josh was extremely supportive.

I felt confident he was going to be a wonderful dad, a really good partner.

I felt secure in our partnership.

There would be an equal distribution of labor and support.

After Sarah received her master's degree in North Carolina, she and Josh moved to Boston and they were expecting a baby.

So she showed up

very pregnant to her first class of her PhD and then gave birth between semesters and then went back to class.

Six weeks.

Had to get back to class or you lose your funding.

Josh and Sarah found a community in Boston that felt like home, a great place to raise young kids.

They knew their neighbors.

They had Sunday dinners with friends.

Life was busy, but it was good.

I just remember like walking down Moody Street in Waltham and feeling this profound sense of like connection and fulfillment and belonging to this place and these people.

In the summer, they would close down Moody Street to cars, so it would just be foot traffic.

So we would walk, you know, to the library or to restaurant or, you know, wherever pretty much every day.

And Clarence, by the time he was three, was biking.

And so he was biking up and down Moody Street.

He was a known feature on Moody Street over the summers.

Also, because he really loved wearing his dinosaur costume when he went grocery shopping.

So he's recognizable in that sense as well.

By July of 2022, we had just had our second baby.

And I was finishing up the on-campus work for my PhD program.

I had passed my prospectus a month after my kid was born.

I remember breastfeeding him through the through the prospectus defense.

Josh's parents came up to visit while we were there to meet the new baby.

My parents came up as well, but I went too late.

I delivered too late for them to actually meet him.

And then we had to go to Colorado to film a shoot for a documentary we were working on.

And while we were in Colorado, Josh's parents watched our kids quite a bit so that we could get the shoots done that we had to do.

You know, there was like a lot of like me holding a camera with a baby and a carrier sort of bouncing.

But when the baby was asleep or when it wasn't possible to have the baby with me, Josh's mom would take him and have him with her.

Yeah, it sounds like such an exciting time and such a happy time.

You're working on this documentary, you have this brand new baby, and once the documentary wraps, you return to Massachusetts.

So take us to the morning of July 12th.

I had gone to a play group with my kids at Walden Pond.

While we were at the play date, I remember noticing that my baby was a little more,

you know, just slower, more unhappy than normal, more lethargic.

So I took him home and I nursed him and he vomited the entire feed pretty immediately.

And I noticed that he was a little warm, not too bad, but a little warm.

So I called the pediatrician.

And she said that if we notice him vomiting all of his feeds or if his fever spikes above 103, that we needed to take him to the hospital.

And so I just, you know, kept an eye on him throughout the day.

And then it was that night he woke up vomiting again.

And I checked his temperature and it was like 103.7 or something like that.

And so I woke Josh and I said, I think we need to take him to the hospital.

Josh offered to take him and I said, well, he's exclusively breastfed.

I think I need to be the one to take him because I'm his traveling kitchen.

And so Josh went back to sleep, stayed at home with Clarence, and I took the baby to the hospital.

So it's like early morning hours of the 13th that I take the baby to the hospital.

And when you say hospital, you're going to the emergency room?

Yeah, to the emergency room of Newton-Wesley Hospital.

Okay.

And when you got there, how did it start out?

I always feel like, am I overreacting?

Was this actually necessary?

But I remember in triage, they took his temperature and I asked, like, was it right to come?

Should I have stayed home should we just go home and they're like oh no his temperature is really high he needs to be here they tested his blood oxygen levels and his blood oxygen was low that was the biggest concern so they put oxygen blowing by him so that he was getting enough oxygen and then they catheterized him so they could get a urine sample and he screamed through that and then they took a blood sample and he screamed through that And then they said, we need to take an x-ray, a chest x-ray.

And they brought in this portable x-ray machine and they took a chest x-ray looking for pneumonia.

And, you know, the baby's just terribly uncomfortable, very sad, crying a lot, not nursing great.

He's on oxygen.

I don't think I slept that night, just being with my baby through all of these tests and things.

If your baby is sick, it is reasonable and sensible to seek medical care, but it's hard too.

No parent is immune to the helpless feeling of watching their baby be poked and prodded by medical staff.

Ultimately, their baby was diagnosed with RSV.

He would clear the virus and he would be okay.

But something happened at the hospital and it had nothing to do with RSV.

Sarah and Josh and the rest of their family were launched into a nightmare when a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia revealed an injury.

People came in for morning rounds and then when they leave, The main attending pediatrician and a medical student stayed behind and they said, the x-ray confirmed that your child has a rib fracture.

Your baby has a rib fracture.

And because of that, that's opened a child welfare investigation.

And there's a lot of tests that we have to run now to meet our legal liability.

We have to run them regardless of your consent.

And so we'll be doing those today.

And you need to call your husband and have him take your child to his pediatrician for a child welfare examination.

I remember when they told me about the rib fracture, I asked, is there anything we need to do for it?

Do we need to treat treat it in any way?

Will it impact his life?

You know, is there concerns about like his health with the rib fracture?

And they said, no, it's healed or healing, mostly healed.

There's nothing that we would do to treat it.

It's going to resolve or is already basically resolved.

But it's opened this other can of worms that we now have to look into.

When they came in and said, well, now we have to open this investigation.

And here's these next steps that you have to take and that josh has to take what was it like to hear that i mean

i think mostly i was so naive i think i didn't really even have a strong sense of what a fracture was you know like to me it was like something between a break and a sprain or something you know

i just had no concept that this could balloon into anything you know like we're good parents our kids are fine there's not going to be anything that would indicate child abuse or anything like that.

I think I I felt frustrated that we would be running these tests when I was concerned about my kid's oxygen, when his fever was high, when he had just had such a terrible night to now have to be taken to all of these other tests felt sad and frustrating.

When they say we have to open this investigation, was it registering with you that this was an investigation into like you?

as parents like a child abuse thing did they say that outright they didn't say child abuse when they they first brought it up.

And in fact, I remember them saying things like, obviously you're a concerned parent.

You brought your sick child to the hospital.

Things that right away, I think, reduced the severity of the situation.

I had no sense that like the integrity of our family was at stake.

So my child and I were wheeled to the a skeletal room, x-ray room.

And they did what's called a full skeletal where they take x-rays of every single inch of his body.

They had me be the one to hold him in the correct positions to be able to get all the angles that they wanted.

So I'm holding my little three-month-old infant in these really contorted positions and he's screaming.

And the techs are like behind this, like literal iron curtain, you know, so that they don't get the radiation that they're spewing onto my child, right?

And my baby, he screams so much that he loses his voice at a time when I already know that he needs to be on oxygen, that they've told me he needs to be on oxygen.

It felt so horrible.

And I felt so powerless, I think, in that moment.

I asked at the time, what's the long-term impact of this amount of radiation on an infant?

Do you know?

And they said, we don't know.

Nobody studied that.

We wouldn't be allowed to study that.

And then they take us straight from the x-ray skeletal room.

to the MRI room and they hand me a consent form and they say, you need to sign this consent form.

And I said, I guess I'm confused.

I was told you're going to run these tests regardless of my consent.

And if this consent form indicates that I feel like taking this MRI is in the best medical interest of my child at this moment, that's not how I feel.

I don't agree.

So I don't want to sign the consent form.

And then there is a sort of hushed, tense conversation in the next room.

And then they came out and wheeled us back to our room.

The pediatrician came in and she said, if you don't sign the consent form, it's going to look really bad to a judge.

And that was the first time I'd heard anything about courts or judges being involved at all.

And so I agree to sign the consent form.

They bring it up to me and I sign the consent form with a note saying, I don't feel like this is in the best medical interest of my child at this time.

And I expressed again to the pediatrician that I felt like what he needed was oxygen.

He needed fluids.

He wasn't eating well.

He wasn't going to get any of that in an MRI.

What was Josh's reaction to the situation when you spoke with him?

I think it was similar to mine.

And I think like part of what's at play in a situation like this is just information asymmetry.

The doctors know about an x-ray and we know about literally every single other moment of that child's life.

We knew that nobody who had ever held our baby would have intentionally tried to harm him.

We knew that he was safe and loved and well cared for in a home with people who were entirely dedicated to his well-being.

We knew that it was beyond the scope of possibility that anyone who held him, and we knew every single person who had held him would have intentionally tried to injure or hurt this child, right?

So Josh's reaction immediately was like, oh, I wonder if it was a birth injury.

You know, I wonder if like squeezing through the birth canal could have caused this injury.

He's young enough.

That seemed plausible.

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So, Sarah's first reaction to learning about her baby's rib fracture is concern.

She wants to know if they should be doing anything to treat it and if he'll be okay.

And the hospital has told her that they're going to open up an investigation, but it's still feeling more like a formality, just another hurdle they need to get through.

What the hospital hasn't said is that Sarah and Josh are now suspected of possible child abuse.

So, the social worker comes in.

Her name is Jill Stacks.

And I should just reiterate: every single person who enters our room comes in in full PPE

because, you know, this is not that long after COVID.

It's during the height of RSV, which is what our baby had.

So, everybody's like masked, gowned, hat, you know, like everything,

intense protective equipment.

And so, she comes in and says, when we're looking for non-accidental trauma, we're looking for trauma that was non-accidental.

Do you know what that means?

And I think that like sets the tone for the whole interview, right?

Like it's just the super condescending, aggressive, I think pretty snide interrogation of me and of what's happened.

She asked me for an explanation of the injury.

And I say, the only thing that I'm aware of, the only time I know in his entire life that he was potentially hurt is when he fell from a bed a couple of weeks ago.

And we picked him up.

We soothed him.

He was comforted pretty quick.

I looked up on the American Academy of Pediatrics what to do.

And they said, if he doesn't show these signs of concussion, then he's fine.

You don't need to take him in.

So we didn't take him in.

That's the only thing that I know of where he might have been hurt.

And she asked, like, well, who was in the room?

Who was watching him when that happened?

Oh, you were watching him when that happened, you know?

And then I said, well, I was watching him, but I had put him on the bed to like run running and get a diaper or something.

And my husband was in the room, just facing the other direction because he was working.

He had fallen off the bed by like sort of scooting himself off the bed by like waving his arms like babies do.

You know, it was surprising.

You know, we hadn't expected him to fall off the bed, he wasn't rolling or anything like that yet.

And she asked a question,

Does your husband regularly ignore the children when he's alone in the room with them?

And it was such an absurd question.

Like, Josh is such a deeply good, involved, loving parent that my immediate response was to roll my eyes, which killed me.

The social worker, her name is Jill Sachs, immediately said, I see that you're rolling your eyes.

I'm curious why you're not taking this more seriously, or something like that, which,

in fairness, was a rude response to a rude investigation.

And also,

by this point, it's like after lunchtime, you know, I hadn't been given any food.

I hadn't slept the night before in my breastfeeding mom.

And it had just been a really intense day so far.

So I think I was not at my best, admittedly, would have been better had I not rolled my eyes.

And I think there's a lot of reasons why it made sense to roll my eyes in that moment.

Anyway, and so she leaves sort of on that note.

Like, I see you're rolling your eyes.

I'll be back.

Yeah, you know, I understand, right, that like, probably hospitals are on high alert for identifying child abuse, But it's interesting the way that you've described that even when she comes in and she says looking for non-accidental injuries, like looking for it.

I'm trying to find it.

I'm expecting it to be there is sort of like coded in there,

as well as her interpretation of your husband ignoring the child when he's working and that he clearly wasn't, it wasn't the arrangement that he was watching the child at that moment.

So it doesn't feel like a neutral exchange.

No, I think it definitely was.

And what was so curious to me is she leaves and then she comes back a little while later and she said she's spoken to other people and they've recommended to her that she should ask some other questions.

So here's the other questions.

Is there a history of domestic violence?

Have the police ever visited your home?

You know, do you have food insecurity?

Like.

Is there substance misuse?

Like all of these like really, really basic questions that you like should very obviously be like first order questions whenever you're in the midst of a child abuse investigation that were just totally passed over in this first interview.

As soon as the hospital becomes suspicious of Sarah, her every move is monitored and dissected, looking for anything that might point to a sign that she is an abusive parent.

She hasn't slept or had anything to eat since arriving to the hospital.

And over and over again, she's asked to hold her screaming baby still for more tests.

tests.

And she tries like four different entry points.

And my baby's still screaming, still has a really hoarse voice.

Blood squirts out into the hospital bassinet.

You know, I'm trying to hold them down so that they can do this.

And I start sobbing.

And I remember the hospital nurse gives me a big hug.

I just feel so.

shaken and desperate and scared and

just helpless.

That actually comes up later on the report that I cried during the blood withdraw with the suggestion, the implication that maybe I was scared about what they would find when they took his blood.

Test after test came back clear, but it didn't matter.

Everything Sarah did seemed like it was being interpreted negatively or as something maybe a guilty person might do.

Sarah had pushed back against the MRI because she wanted her son to be receiving oxygen.

She wanted that to be the priority.

She'd cried holding him down for blood draws, seeing that her infant son had lost his voice from screaming.

She and Josh then spoke with DCF workers and answered all of their questions about their parenting style, their family life.

It felt almost impossible that this wouldn't be cleared up.

They are loving and supportive parents.

All they'd done was taken their sick infant to the hospital, and he would need to be observed for a second night.

So, of course, Sarah stayed with him.

And everybody that we're talking to, all of our parents, Josh's uncle, who's a radiologist, all of them are just saying, you know, like, it sucks, but cooperate.

And then this will go away and you'll be fine.

This isn't going to be something that lasts longer than the next little while.

And so I go to bed that night.

And then I wake up to a phone call from Josh.

His dad had been up all night long researching infant rib fractures.

He's the first person to realize that infant rib fractures correlate to high levels of child removal.

He says,

Sarah, there's a real possibility that they could be trying to take Cal today.

You need to get out of the hospital.

Do whatever you can to leave the hospital.

And so I call the nurse in and I say, okay,

when can we get out?

You said that the marker for being able to leave the hospital is if he was able to go the whole night without oxygen.

He went the whole night without oxygen.

I would like to go.

When can we go?

And she says, as soon as the doctors come, they're just doing their rounds.

We'll be in here soon.

And then hours pass and there's no doctors.

And I call the nurse in many times.

It's always, they'll be in soon.

The doctors will be in soon.

You're the next stop, they'll be in soon.

And then, if they don't come,

and then one of the times I call the nurse in, I'm asking her, when can we go?

I want to go.

And I look past her through the door, and there's a police officer by our door.

And I just like, I know what that looks like, you know.

And I said, why is there a police officer here?

and she said

don't worry about it but you're legally not allowed to leave and then she goes and i burst into tears and i sit and i nurse and i hold my baby and i cry and that's all i can do for like several hours while i'm waiting for whatever's going to happen to happen

you know my father-in-law had found a lawyer for us and we we agreed to let him represent us and so he and it was just like people making calls, you know, like whatever lawyer we can find.

And so he agrees to represent us.

And he's talking to me and he says, okay, so there's a police officer there.

So you're going to be arrested.

That's a done deal.

Like, that's just what's going to happen.

They're going to take the baby.

They're going to arrest you.

A trip to the hospital that had started over concern for their baby's fever had now evolved into this very real threat that Sarah could be arrested, that she and Josh would have their baby taken from them.

As a parent, it's a nightmare there really aren't words for.

But then for just a moment, it seemed like maybe things would turn around and maybe everything would be okay.

Apparently, Josh during this time called our pediatrician, our kids' primary care pediatrician.

And she'd said, Well, I told them that you've made every single well visit, that I've never seen any signs of concern, that I saw him as recently as two weeks ago.

Like, let me call them back.

And so, she calls them back, and then she calls Josh, and she's like, They're going to let him go.

And so, amazingly, like, it feels like a miracle.

They come in and they discharge us.

And I'm able to leave the hospital with my baby.

I just remember shaking, like physically shaking, because it was such a relief that we got out and that we're together.

The department said that we were going to have a safety plan that was infinitely preferable to the alternative, right?

And so we see the safety plan, we agree to it, and we sleep together all in our home that night.

And I remember.

my baby waking up the next morning in his bassinet and just smiling.

And that was this really tender, touching moment for me of like, we're home, we're safe, we're together, and we're going to be okay, and it's going to be fine.

And then we just spend this like halcyon day the next day, all together.

We go to the park and we go out to dinner together that night, and we have this lovely time together.

And Josh and I are like literally holding hands in bed that night, like just this tender, relief, almost cliche image of like sweetness and tenderness.

We're like just falling falling asleep.

And then we hear a knock at our door.

And that's when everything happens.

Yeah.

I wanted to ask

before we get into that.

I always think about when we're doing these interviews, people are going to listen to this.

They don't know you.

And I imagine you've already maybe encountered this with your, your story being, you know, national news that there might be people that assume that there was abuse or something.

Yeah, absolutely.

You describe this feeling of just like relief, and that makes so much sense to me.

Like, oh, wow, we made it through this.

Obviously, you didn't know that it wasn't over yet.

But was there any part of your brain that was started to question, like, wait, how did this happen?

Or is someone close to us hurting our child?

Or was there ever a moment where you started to like wonder that at all?

I think in the hospital, my main concern was for my baby's respiratory RSV diagnosis.

And I felt, I think, real panic that that wasn't being treated.

He wasn't on oxygen.

He wasn't on fluids.

When they told me that the rib fracture was healed or healing, I think that for me quieted any like long-term concerns about the impact of the rib fracture on his health.

In terms of what caused it,

I knew that finding a cause would help with the investigation, but I wasn't concerned about anybody having ever hurt my child.

Like I said, I knew every single person who had ever touched my kid, besides the nurses in the hospital who were treating him.

I knew every single person.

And there was just no doubt.

It was, I think, actually an impossibility that any of them would have, would have ever tried to hurt them.

And so that wasn't a concern for me.

And I know how that sounds.

I know that sounds like.

I'm passing the buck or like I'm maybe malingering or something.

But again, I think it's the reality of information asymmetry that that you know so much about this baby.

And so I knew that nobody was trying to hurt him.

It never entered the realm of possibility to be concerned about that for me.

I think that's actually really telling and powerful to hear you say that.

And it's sad that we have to even like be like overtly state it.

But I think the fact that you were like, this is so impossible.

that I'm not actually even worried about it or suspicious of anyone because I'm so sure that this isn't happening, you know, is very telling that your kid was in a very safe, loving environment and still is.

So, take us to that moment of you hear this knock on the door.

Who answered the door and what was going on?

Okay, so there is a knock at the door, like the loudest knock I've ever heard in my entire life.

And the Waltham police shout, Waltham police, open up.

And Josh goes and opens the door.

He leaves the chain lock on it, so the door is just open to crack.

And I remember hearing a woman's voice saying she was there from the Department of Children and Families, and we needed to let them in.

And I just remember this feeling of unreality, like, this can't be.

Like,

just like the last day where we had set up all of these safety precautions, where we had had the safety plan.

And even at 5 p.m.

that night, our caseworker had come to our house to get eyes on the kids before the weekend.

And he had reassured us that he would be coming back on Monday to go over the safety plan, do a more full like home visit, see what our home safety was like.

I remember Josh saying,

do you have a warrant to come into our house?

And they said, we don't need a warrant.

And Josh said, do you have paperwork of any kind, any sort of paperwork?

And they said, no.

And Josh said, okay, come back when you have paperwork.

There was some back and forth.

And ultimately, they said, well, we'll call our superiors.

And so we shut the door and they went off and

made calls.

And then they came back and just said, we don't have paperwork, but you have to let us in.

It goes back and forth like this for a long time.

It's a while before they finally admit, we're here to take your children.

The department has taken custody and we're here to take your kids.

It was just shock and horror and desperation.

You know, like you imagine,

like a wild animal that's being chased down or something like that, but that's what it feels like.

You're just like moving and doing things and trying whatever you can come up with to like get out of this situation.

You know, Josh is begging them, begging them to come back.

If not with paper, then at least come back at nine in the morning when this is going to be less terrifying for our children.

And they just say, it's not the policy.

That's not the policy.

We call our lawyer and our lawyer answers.

And he calls the police superiors and they tell him, basically, if we don't give up the kids, then they're going to kick down the door.

And so, our lawyer calls us back and he says, Listen, you need to give up the kids, or they're going to take them by force.

They're going to kick down your door, and you might never see them again.

It was very clear, it was completely unambiguous that it was either

wake up our children and hand them to these strangers in the middle of the night and watch them drive away,

or have armed police officers come into our home and take them from their beds.

Which one do you want?

And so Josh said, okay,

I guess we have no choice.

They rest fed the baby.

And I remember they didn't bring proper car seats.

They brought like a front-facing car seat and then a booster seat for our infant and three-year-old.

So they said we needed to give them our car seats.

And so we went and we got our infant car seat.

And I strapped my baby in.

And they asked if it would make me feel better if I was the one to put him in the car.

And I just remembered the callousness of that.

Like, what's going to make me feel better right now?

They told me to pack some diapers and some breast milk.

And we asked how they were going to feed our kids, because both of our kids had allergies.

Our oldest had been hospitalized before for anaphylaxis when we accidentally gave him some dairy.

So we asked what the meal plan was, what the food plan was.

And they said, there isn't one, but we'll call a pediatrician and that's the plan.

That's not a plan.

That's a plan to have a plan, but that's not a plan.

But it didn't matter, you know, like

they were here to take the kids and they weren't going to leave without them.

And so we put the infant in the car, and then I had to go and wake my three-year-old,

which is the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life.

I remember rubbing his back and saying, My boy,

you get to go on a car ride

to a new and an exciting place.

You're going to make new friends, and mom and dad are going to come and find you as soon as we can.

Because I thought maybe

if I introduced it gently, that you wouldn't be scared.

But he was scared.

And he woke up just screaming.

And he screamed the whole time.

He said, I don't want to go.

Don't make me go.

I want to go in our car.

Come with me.

Mommy, daddy, don't make me go.

He was thrashing, you know, we tried to put him in his car seat and he was just thrashing.

And then I remember the caseworkers trying to like force him into the car and watching and being totally helpless.

It's not like I could say, don't touch my child.

They were forcing him and he like tumbled out of the car and into the street.

And they were like, oh, should I tickle your belly?

You know, just so awful, so awful.

And then they said, well, I think maybe seeing you is upsetting your child.

So we want you to go into your home while we force him into the car seat without you there to watch.

And we said, we're not going to do that.

And so Josh took our kid and he got him ice cream and he walked back and forth to get him to calm down.

And eventually he stopped screaming.

We got him buckled into the car seat and they drove away.

I couldn't actually bear to watch it.

And

they didn't give us any real information about when we would see our kids again or where they were going or

like when even the hearing would be to like request permission to take our kids like they had already done.

The police officer just said, figure it out on Monday, right?

Because this is Saturday.

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Sarah and Josh were not going to wait until Monday to do something.

They called their family members and woke everyone up.

They both came from big families with lots of siblings.

And so, pretty quickly, everybody was on board researching, making calls, coming together to help them.

Pretty immediately, there was a bunch of people already looking up bylaws and searching websites and looking for phone numbers.

We found an emergency hotline phone number and we called them and

we read them a bylaw from their own website that says if you take kids without a court order, basically like if you take kids under the B3 order, which is the order that supposedly gives them the legal right to take kids without any kind of warrant or paperwork or court order.

then you're supposed to place them with kinship, with kincare, next of kin.

And And so we said, they're here in the state, these kids' grandparents.

They're supposed to be placed with them.

It's here on your website.

It's here in your bylaws.

That needs to happen.

And they said, well, we're not sure that we can do that.

How long is it until you're able to get some kind of answer about where they are and where were they?

We never learned where they were.

We have no information about that.

We had no idea where in the world our children were until sometime around 6 p.m.

the next night when we finally got them placed with their grandparents.

And that was just a huge relief, you know, just to know physically where they were in the world and who they were with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then now at least you know that they're with people that they know who love them.

But I imagine the sort of legal steps forward are pretty complicated.

And so what does the next week look like for you?

Yeah.

So what's amazing about this is my dad is a lawyer.

Josh's dad is a lawyer.

Josh's brother is a lawyer.

He has uncles who are lawyers.

Like, I'm getting an advanced degree.

Like, we're a pretty deeply educated family.

And it was so confusing and so difficult to navigate the legal system around all of this.

We have five siblings each, and almost all of our siblings are working almost full time on this case, trying to get these kids reunited with us.

And it was still confusing and overwhelming and labyrinthine, you know, just trying to navigate this system.

The first order of business was trying to find a lawyer that actually had experience in child welfare, which is really hard to do, mostly because they're all so busy.

They're all completely overwhelmed with their caseloads, which again, I think speaks to some realities of this system, certainly in the state of Massachusetts.

We went through like three different lawyers trying to find somebody who had the specialization they needed, who had the time to take on the case.

And we finally found somebody who was available and competent, but it was still going to be a month before we were able to do a custody hearing that would allow our kids to be reunited with us physically in our home.

So ultimately, we were given, again,

some of the most liberal visitation I've actually ever heard of in this system.

I think it was two hours at a time, three times a day, which is extremely liberal considering considering most parents in the system get one hour a week in a conference room, right?

And the way that happened is Josh's aunt is a big blogger.

You know, she's like previously one Times blog of the year, and she did a Twitter thread the next day, the morning after our kids were taken, and it immediately went viral.

And so immediately the department was under a lot of scrutiny.

We had federal senators calling them.

We had the state attorney general was briefed on our case.

So there was just a lot of attention and pressure put on them because of that, which was good and bad, right?

Like we got really, really liberal visitation.

And I think they felt a real need to like buckle down and really prove that they were right to take the kids.

What was the reason or concern that was ultimately provided to you as far as like why they were going to remove your children?

You know, because as you had said, there was a plan, there was a safety plan.

You had met with a social worker and then suddenly there's this different decision that was made.

Were you ever given an explanation as to why that was made?

Yeah, I mean, essentially, just a different supervisor looked over the case and made a different decision.

I think it's as simple as that.

A different worker looked at it and made a different decision.

A month later, the 72-hour hearing happened.

72-hour hearings and child custody cases are supposed to take place within the first 72 hours the children are removed from their home.

But it's it's not uncommon for the hearings to be delayed.

Two common reasons are a shortage of lawyers and courts that are overwhelmed with caseloads.

So in Sarah and Josh's case, it took a month.

They were lucky that their kids were with family and they had a lot of visitation rates, which is also very uncommon.

And during that time, they had also discovered the cause of the rib fracture.

We'd figured out what had caused the injury.

And what had happened is while we were in Colorado filming about six weeks earlier from the hospital visit, Josh's mom was watching the infant and she went to get him out of the car seat and she was like holding something in her other hand or something like that.

So she was trying to pick him up one-handed and he threw his head back and she gripped him to keep him from falling.

And apparently that's enough to cause a rib fracture.

Like every doctor who reviewed the case testified to that.

The doctor for the Department of Children and Families said that she thinks it was a few days outside of the timeline, so therefore couldn't have caused it.

But like any other doctor who reviewed the case said that that was almost certainly the cause of the injury.

And so I think because we had an explanation, because we also had our pediatrician testify that, you know, she had never seen any cause for concern.

We'd attended every child well visit.

She'd seen the kid as recently as a few weeks before, and she hadn't noticed the rib fracture or any indication of the rib fracture.

I think all of that coalesced to us getting what's called conditional custody.

At the hearing, Sarah and Josh received conditional custody.

This wasn't over by any means, but they were allowed to take their children home with them.

This was huge.

They cried tears of relief.

Sarah remembers putting their son Clarence to bed that evening.

We sang him his favorite songs and read him books.

And then I think it was really like that first night that the night terrors started.

Our boy had never had night terrors before, but you know, every single night in that apartment.

For the remainder of our time there, he would wake up screaming right around one in the morning and was inconsolable for like an hour.

You you know.

I just remember holding him and his arms windmilling and just this inconsolable terror that continued for about an hour every single night.

You know, like a night terrier, they're not really awake.

They're not really asleep.

They just have to like move through it.

And you just hold them and make sure that they're not in a position where they can hurt themselves.

But there's not that much you can do.

And it felt extremely reminiscent, you know, of this entire experience where this horrible, terrible thing was happening.

The worst thing that ever happened to my child, the worst hours of his life, I was not there for.

I was not allowed to be there for.

I was not able to do anything for him during that window.

And I'll never know what happened, you know, like I'll never know what that was like for him.

There's a lot of just sort of picking up the pieces and trying to move on with resilience, teaching resilience, teaching your kid that this terrible thing happened to you, but now we can help other families and we can, we can be strong and we can appreciate how our whole family came and helped us and took care of us.

And that's what family does.

Family takes care of each other no matter what.

There's this pediatrician who is describing separations at the border, and he describes the experience of child separation as shrapnel in the brain,

where it's this thing that is going to be with you and with your kids forever.

Like it's not something that you just get over, you know.

Even as recently as a few months ago, we watched Lilo and Stitch with my boy.

Totally forgot about this CPS line in it.

We watched the original Lilo and Stitch, and he was devastated, devastated by it.

He was, you know, crying.

And at the end, he was like, Do you know what it reminded me of?

It reminded me of when those people took me away.

And what do you say to that?

Like, how do you express to a six-year-old, like, this terrible thing happened?

It shouldn't have ever happened.

But we have to live.

You have to keep living and trying to do good and trying to help other people where you can.

can yeah it's really powerful and the connection that you're making to to the fact that this is happening not to diminish your experience at all it shouldn't be happening at all but it's happening to a lot of families in different circumstances families with significantly less power than us i think one thing that's happened that's been overwhelming but also really humbling is because our child abuse investigation our cps case made the news in such like a very public way.

You know, we were like on the front page of the Washington Post and we were on in AP News and anyway, all these other places.

Every time that's happened, we've had like many, many, many calls from other families saying, this happened to me.

What do we do?

And it's felt like a real responsibility, I think, for Josh and for me both to try to help.

other families who just have so many fewer resources than we do.

At our final custody hearing, when we got full custody in November, I remember sitting in the courthouse and looking out over the galley to this other case that was happening.

And there was this 13-year-old girl who was serving as interpreter on her own child welfare case because her parents didn't speak English.

And this caseworker was like telling her what to tell her parents these like ridiculously intricate conditions of custody that they had to follow exactly or they would lose custody again.

And she was trying to interpret for them and their parents looked so confused and the caseworker was just cool and professional, whatever.

And I remember thinking, like, this is a face of child welfare.

Like, this is what child welfare looks like.

I think in most situations right now, just these

low-resourced families who are doing their best, trying to keep up with these like additional rocks that we're throwing at them when they're already treading water.

What do you think isn't working or could be done better?

And what kind of work have you all been doing around that?

I think some of the most accessible solutions from a grassroots level that would make a meaningful difference is looking at mandatory reporting, which wouldn't have actually made a difference in our case, but would impact like 85% of child welfare cases.

So 85% of child welfare cases are for what's called neglect, which is in practice, most of the time related to conditions of poverty.

You know, like if a kid doesn't have a lunch, if the kid doesn't have adequate child care, if the kid doesn't have a coat and it's cold, like isn't dressed appropriate to the weather, then those would be neglect and those get reported.

And that's what 85% of investigations and removals are for reasons of neglect.

If we changed what gets reported so that we're not actually reporting neglect of people to a system that's really their only tool is either removal or the threat of removal to coerce behavior, which makes some sense.

Maybe if there's like child abuse.

I think in very, very specific situations that that would be appropriate and a useful tool.

But certainly when you're just like struggling with poverty, demanding that you no longer struggle with poverty isn't actually going to help the child, isn't going to help the family, isn't the tool that we need.

And so I think looking at mandatory reporting and changing what that looks like, so we're no longer reporting neglect to child welfare, but maybe connecting them with resources to get them the materials that they need to meet the conditions of their lives, I think would make a meaningful difference in making kids safer, actually, in supporting families and making kids kids safer.

Because foster care, decades of research has shown, is actually usually not very safe for kids.

So, I think that's a big deal.

What we've done ourselves is we've gotten involved in some different organizations.

We've also filed lawsuits.

The purpose of the lawsuit that we filed against the department and the state is attempting to close some of the loopholes that exist right now that allow the department to remove children without any kind of paperwork.

We're trying to make it much harder for them to do emergency removals without court orders or warrants so that they're beholden to the Constitution in a way that they're just not right now.

So that's one of the biggest changes that we're working on.

The other lawsuit that we filed is looking at child abuse pediatricians who currently basically practice as prosecutors, right?

Like they make a determination on whether or not something is abuse and then they get paid.

additionally to testify that it's abuse in a court hearing.

And so there's just like perverse incentives that are obviously at work there.

And so the purpose of that case is to just rethink how we're doing child abuse pediatricians.

And if they're going to function as prosecutors, they should be held to the same standards as prosecutors.

And they're not right now.

And so, you know, the fact that they did take your children without a warrant or any kind of paperwork, you know, what is the legality of that?

There was a ProPublica study several years ago, like 2002 or something like that, where they looked into searches and seizures enacted by child welfare workers in New York, and it was something like 96%, right?

96% of search and seizures by child welfare officials happen without a warrant, happen without court orders or any kind of ever having to talk with a judge.

And so it happens at a really, really high rate.

I think there's a tendency to think like, oh, this is just happening in liberal states or on the East Coast, and that's not so.

Texas also has really high rates of removal, really high rates of warrantless searches and seizures.

I think it's like a United States problem, not just a coastal problem.

I think most

CPS organizations have written like bylaws that allow them to sort of hop over the Fourth and 14th Amendments.

I would say that in most states they're legal, but I think in no state are they constitutional.

Yeah.

And it's just like, you know, I don't have any children, but I have a lot of friends that do.

And they're just like, yeah, you know, people have dropped their babies.

Like accidents happen.

And it's scary to think that an accident would put you in this situation.

Like that, what is the expectation of parents?

Like perfection?

Like, what are we, you know, talking about here?

No, absolutely.

One thing that was so unnerving for us was we had a friend who I guess was friends with the former head of the Arlington DCF office, which is where our case was being run through.

And they asked her like what advice she would give to us.

We don't have her name or her number or anything.

They just forwarded the text afterwards.

But she said, like, part of her text was: if one of them dropped the baby, they should just fess up.

They'll lose custody, but then at least the other parent can get the baby.

That's an accident.

That's not child abuse.

That's like a totally innocent accident.

And they would lose custody over that?

Like, is this the sort of parenting environment that we want to be parenting in?

Perfection, or you lose everything?

I think that was really disturbing to see the mindset of how that played out for that former official, the person who would be making these decisions.

100%.

And so how has this, you know, continued to impact you and your family?

You talked about the process of getting full custody back and then have some ongoing lawsuits.

But over the past couple of years, how has this impacted how you think about even going to seek medical treatment for your children or where you live?

You know, what have been sort of the longer-term changes that have happened as a result of this?

Yeah, so I just want to underscore, like, I think in many ways our CPS case was really fortunate, really clearly marked by her privilege.

And I don't want to give the impression at all that it wasn't profoundly traumatic for everybody in our family.

I can't imagine possibly bringing my eight kid to an emergency room at this point.

I don't think I could do it, you know.

We just had our third baby, probably our last baby, and he had a tongue tie, you know, like

very normal thing, a tongue and a lip tie, and it needed to be cut.

And so I took him to the pediatric dentist, and she's like, Okay, so we'll take him back and you just stay in the waiting room.

The amount of real terror that I felt in that moment of sitting in a waiting room while medical professionals had my baby somewhere else that I couldn't be was profound.

It shocked me how difficult that was for me.

You know, curiously, our kid who was three at the time, he's now six, almost every year on the anniversary, his night terrors resolved after we moved away from our apartment where he was taken from.

For the most part, they resolved a few months later after we moved.

But curiously, for the last two years, he's had a night terror again on the anniversary of the removal.

And we like certainly did not break it up with him.

That wasn't something that we were like, hey, do you remember?

You know,

just totally unprompted, he had night terrors.

Somebody was asking me about some of the ICE raids and the family separations, and acknowledging that immigration is complicated and people will have strong feelings in both directions.

My response to them was:

I don't think it's actually something that you can recover from, having government officials come to your house without any sort of paperwork or due process and take people from your home.

That's not something you recover from.

Like, I think that profoundly impacted how I view and think about safety and democracy and security and home.

These like fundamental concepts are radically changed for me.

And I think there's just a sense of unsafety that will follow me the rest of my life, the rest of the time I'm parenting, the rest of the time my children are parenting.

You know, yeah, I don't think I'll get away from that.

What happened to us was terrible.

It shouldn't have happened.

I feel really grateful that we had community to lean on and that showed up for us, you know, brought meals on court dates and brought toys to our babies when they didn't have access to their toys.

We were really lucky in that regard, really

supported.

I think not every family in this system has access to that.

And so I think societally, we have a responsibility to care for the least advantaged in our society.

I think those are the families that disproportionately are being sacrificed to this system.

Their parenting habits might be different.

They might not be like the ideal parent in the ways that we think of like this 1950s mom or something.

But every single family that I have ever spoken to, and I've spoken to hundreds now who have been caught in this system, care deeply about their kids and are completely dedicated to their happiness and their well-being and their health and their long-term success.

And I think it's just important to remember that people will take care of their kids.

People who can't take care of themselves take care of their kids.

And they do it when everything is stacked against them.

And I think as much as we can support that, we'll be saving children.

I think that's how we save children.

I loved that interview with Sarah.

Yeah, Sarah told an incredibly difficult story with such poise and thoughtful reflection about not only what she and Josh went through as parents, but the bigger bigger problem that exists in the way that families are treated in situations like this one.

Yeah, I think for anybody listening, it was powerful and terrifying, but I can imagine if you're a parent listening to that, there would be like a different level of being disturbed because you can imagine what that would be like.

Yeah, we took our daughter to the emergency room when she was a little over a year old because she was clearly having some difficulty breathing and she was just making this kind of grunt sound.

I remember we googled it and there was immediately YouTube's like, if they're breathing this way, take them to the ER.

So it was late at night.

We took her in and they did end up actually doing a chest x-ray, which is already, for anyone who doesn't know, a very hard thing to put a small child through.

They don't understand what's happening.

They're scared.

I had to hold her down for this and they had to do it twice.

She's screaming, mama, mama, mama.

And I'm holding her down and she's already sick.

And now she's terrified.

Even you having to hold her, like Sarah talking about her experience in the hospital, having to hold her baby, and you talking about that now.

It's like, you know, well, specifically for your example, you know that this is the best for your child.

Like you need this medical care.

But I imagine in the moment when you're physically holding her body and she's uncomfortable, like that probably feels bad to you.

It feels horrible.

You feel like you're betraying the trust of your child.

They're looking at a room full of adults and they're looking at you to save them because they don't understand what's happening.

And listening to Sarah talk about the feeling of having to balance the rational voice in her mind of like, my baby needs this care.

He needs these tests.

So I'm going to help the hospital.

get the information they need to diagnose him.

But then having that very reasonable emotional reaction be interpreted in such a sinister way is just, I mean, it was heartbreaking.

Yeah.

And I want to talk about the lawsuit a little bit because one thing that was important to Sarah and Josh going into this interview with us and telling their story on the knife was that, yes, they are telling their story, but this problem is, you know, something that is actually pretty expansive.

Yeah.

You know, I haven't read the lawsuit, but you did.

So tell me, like, what's going on with their lawsuit?

Yeah.

So, as we know, this happened to them in 2022.

So in May of 2023, Sarah and Josh filed a complaint against several individual officials within the police department and the Massachusetts Department of Families, stating that their actions were unconstitutional.

And I think that's really important because,

you know, when the police came knocking at their door, Sarah and Josh did, you know, he did crack the door open and he asked a really reasonable question, which is, show me what paperwork you have because if someone can come to your door in the middle of the night and demand your children or that they're going to break in and take them and they don't owe you any legitimate legal verification of that.

They literally have no paperwork, no warrant,

no order, nothing.

And they just say, give me your kids.

I mean, it is the most un-American thing I've ever heard.

Like, no one should be able to just beat your door down and take your children.

But Sarah said in the interview that this is happening all of the time.

And she's so often.

She's right.

Yeah.

Isn't that just like mind-blowing and disproportionately happening to low-income black and brown families?

And, you know, I think that Josh and Sarah, through this incredible ordeal, had a lot of support from their extended families and grandparents who were able to step in and take custody of their children.

And Sarah talked about that.

Yeah.

She acknowledged they're an incredibly well-resourced family, very highly educated.

There's family available.

They had, you know, money and resources, which puts them in a very small percentage of this is this is not a typical case, right?

But she, you know, she spoke about that really well.

Yeah.

So in March of 2024, the judge overseeing Sarah and Josh's case rules that the involved social workers at the hospital and the police officers who showed up at their house that night, they are not entitled to something that's called qualified immunity.

And qualified immunity is the quick explanation of it is that it's a legal doctrine that protects government officials from individual liability in civil lawsuits unless they violate a constitutional right.

So basically, qualified immunity would mean that the doctors, the police officers, everybody involved would not be able to be prosecuted.

Right.

Because what we, I think, all agree on is that

If a police officer or a social worker can be at the mercy of lawsuits.

You know, how could they ever pay for representation over and over again to get them out of lawsuits?

Someone could be angry at a judge who gave them whatever, gave them community service, and then they could file erroneous lawsuits against that judge for revenge.

For example, would be a reason why a judge would need qualified immunity, right?

Yeah, or a social worker.

Or a social worker.

So like a social worker could go through the process if they went about it the correct way.

And maybe they end up deciding we need to remove children from a home, but then the investigation takes place and the children are returned.

Well, if a investigation took place the right way,

what we don't want is for that social worker to be living with the risk of being sued by civilians, the parents that they were doing their best with, but that are angry that their kids were ever taken from them, because that is both costly, time-consuming, it's, I'm sure, emotional.

But if you are in a position of power, such as a hospital social worker who is leading the charge on an investigation into child abuse or a police officer showing up at someone's door, you have a constitutional obligation to not violate these people's rights.

And so the judge is saying you are not going to benefit from this legal doctrine of qualified immunity because you did violate their constitutional rights.

And is part of of the reason that Sarah and Josh are bringing this lawsuit is that they want to change the way that qualified immunity comes to play in some child abuse investigations.

Yeah, I think they want to both raise awareness about the way that investigations are taking place at these hospitals and how quick people were to jump to conclusions here.

But also, I think to hold the people involved accountable.

And they've certainly spoken about it with this other greater purpose purpose that we touched on which is that this problem goes far beyond them.

Yeah.

I mean and I want to say quickly because what we did not do or what I did not do is talk to anyone that works in a hospital or you know look at hospital policies.

And so I also imagine that the people in hospitals are working according to policies that they have to follow for a lot of different reasons.

But that's one of the things that makes this story so complicated is that Sarah gets thrust into this system where there's all of these rules and like organizations that are following their processes.

And then it becomes much more about that than about the human being and Sarah and her child and what's best for them.

I imagine it's like a pretty big effort to try to change those systems.

But from what it sounds like you're saying and what Sarah was saying is that they're trying to do that.

They're trying to like better this system so that it's, I don't know, not hard.

So that it's more fair to parents because you don't want people to be afraid to bring their children into the hospital.

Yeah.

But there's something about like accidents.

Accidents happen.

What I don't want and what I think every parent would not want is to worry that when you take your child into the hospital, they could find something that you're not even aware of and blame you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I also wanted to call out that Josh said when we were speaking to him about the police showing up at his door, he said, you are all making a choice right now.

You've been told to do this, but you don't have to do this because you don't have any paperwork to show me that says you do.

And they did it anyway.

And for me, that was such a important distinction that he made in that moment because he knew they were violating his rights.

and his family's rights and that his children would be traumatized by that.

And he was correct.

Yeah.

And it was just like one person that looked over the file that they'd never met, that had, you know,

very distant from their case and from them as humans that made that decision.

And then suddenly their kids are taken out of their home.

Yeah.

And to your point, not having, you know, spoken with these hospital social workers or any as part of this particular episode, it's like they are notoriously short-staffed.

They all have these large caseloads that are probably very difficult for them to cover.

However, it's like, if a result of this lawsuit or other conversations around this problem result in a more reasonable caseload for each of these social workers so that they can truly do their due diligence in every investigation, then that would be a great outcome.

Agreed.

Sarah mentioned this and I thought it was, I don't know, I'm just so glad that she like made this comparison because she talked about how her son had sleep terrors, basically nightmares, and that strangely, even though they've resolved, he has them at the same time every year so far.

Like, and she's like, it's not like we're talking about it.

It's not we're like, we're like, remember when you were ripped out of the house?

Like, we don't want to remind him of that, but every year on the anniversary, he has like a sleep terror.

And it just goes to show you that that trauma like gets into your body.

And obviously, you know, they're processing it.

They're talking about it as a family.

But this was like a well-resourced family that had their children taken away and didn't know where their kids were for 24 hours.

Horrible.

Okay.

But the idea that people are being taken out of homes without any kind of warrant or paperwork and then being taken to places where their family doesn't know where they are, it's traumatic.

And that's happening with ICE all over our country.

And no matter what you think of immigration, like that's real trauma.

And Sarah said in the interview, like having a family member ripped out of your house without any prior knowledge, without any paperwork, a stranger who you like, okay, I'm just going to take your word for it that you're here legally to take my family member, whether it's a child or a husband or a wife or whoever,

is not something you ever get over.

No, that is total devastation.

And also these people that are coming in and doing this are armed.

I mean, terrifying on every level.

And also,

yeah, you never get over it.

Like it shouldn't be happening.

It should not be happening.

Yeah.

Lastly, I want to mention Sarah and Josh are documentary filmmakers and their company is Matters Media.

We're so grateful for Josh and Sarah for sharing their story with us on the podcast.

Yeah, thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week.

If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it.

Our email is thenife at exactlyrightmedia.com or you can follow us on Instagram at theKnife Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

This has been an Exactly Right Production, hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith, and me, Patia Eaton.

Our producers are Tom Breifogel and Alexa Samorosi.

This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

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