Medical Kidnap, Calculated Heartache, and Destruction of Families

This is Part II of:

Another Boston Children’s Hospital Kidnapping

They were young, and in love, and a few years into their marriage they started their family.  Christina was 22, Jonathon 23, and Annabella Grace Hinote was born six weeks prematurely on January 17, 2014, weighing 4 pounds 8 ounces.  Despite a complicated pregnancy, 72 hours of labor, and a premature birth, Bella was the picture of perfection.  Her parents were overjoyed and as proud as could be.  Any struggles related to Bella’s Severe Reflex were just starting to subside when Boston Children’s Hospital, (BCH), took Bella, and the young couple’s nightmare began.  This was in May 2014, when Bella was a mere 3 months old, and well over a year later, Bella’s parents still fight to get their baby back and bring her home – – – to Alabama.

Typical of so many parents whose children are taken into state custody, their access to their children is severely restricted, and very often unreasonable.  Much of what happens in these cases are outright violations of these children and families civil rights, but the public is so conditioned to believe that these child protection agencies are all about the children.  They are not, and especially when it comes to money, hospitals, and research: Medical Kidnapping: A Threat to Every Child in America Today

Want to know more?  PLEASE educate yourselves with any, preferably ALL of these links and the thousands more that will help more people to understand what is really going on:  

Medical Kidnapping in the U.S. – Kidnapping Children for Drug Trials, Does the State Ever Have a “Right” to Remove Children from a Home?, Are New Pediatric “Child Abuse Specialists” Causing an Increase in Medical Kidnappings?, Child Sex Trafficking through Child “Protection” Services Exposed – Kidnapping Children for Sex, Whistleblowers Reveal CPS Child Kidnappings in Kentucky Adoption Business, Foster Care Children are Worse Off than Children in Troubled Homes – The Child Trafficking Business, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy: A Fake Psychiatric Disorder Used to Medically Kidnap Children? AND, CPS: Problem, meet Solution

ALSO, please know, according to Federal Regulation 46.116, wards of the state, (such as foster children), can be used in clinical research trials that a state appointed representative can sign consent for.  This is what Justina’s Law sought to STOP on a National basis, and is still being fought in Massachusetts at a state level – – – the state that MEDICALLY KIDNAPPED HER just like they did Baby Bella!

The entire country is affected by this law, and medical kidnapping.  These are just some of the children forced from their families and into the system, which means they are allowed to be used as guinnea pigs.  

The Calculated Heartache, and Destruction of Baby Bella’s Family

RIGHT:  May 5th, 2014.  First visit after removal.  Bella’s mother sees her baby 1 hour per week if she’s lucky, and the father once a month, when the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, (DCF), deems it appropriate.  Not a day goes by that Bella’s parents aren’t acutely aware of what both they and their baby are missing in bonding, and cuddling, let alone first crawls, steps, and so much more in Bella’s first year of life, and in their first year of parenting.

This personal journal entry that Bella’s mother shared on her facebook is shared with her permission, and gives some idea of what it’s like when your child is in state custody:

“Some days I get by easier than others. Some days, I just want to throw the towel in because I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. But EVERYDAY, I look at pictures of the beautiful little girl who grew inside my womb and I just know I have to keep going. 

It seems like every time things start looking up, DCF has to take control back the moment they feel like we’re getting the upper hand.  One day, I’m smiling because everything is going right. The next day, I don’t even want to get out of bed because yet again, DCF is “displeased” with me.  But I do. I get up and I face the day, but I feel like I’m just going through the motions. I’m here, but I’m not really….here.  My mind is always preoccupied with the “what ifs”.  “What if I held her in full term?”  Or “What if I had been able to breastfeed her?” Would things be different? I’ll never know. All I have right now are the cards I’ve been dealt and I need to do my best to create the best possible hand.

As I write this, I feel the tiny kicks of new life growing inside of me and I just pray for this nightmare to end.  I pray that I keep this little girl in long enough.  I pray they don’t take her, too.

Every day that I keep her in is another day I know she is safe and protected.  I’m horrified to give birth because I can’t stand the thought of another child being physically pried from my arms.

I see other families out in public. Smiling, laughing, or even fighting with their children and I just think to myself, “why can’t that be us?” As a first time mother, I was robbed of one of the most critical, irreplaceable times in my daughters life.  These are days I’ll never get back. I watched her first laugh through a video that had been posted on Facebook.  Her first time standing with the support of her crib rails, I saw through a picture message on my cell phone.

In 9 months, I’ve held her in my arms maybe 33 hours at best. I can’t help but wonder, what do they want from me?!? I’m doing what they ask and they keep raising the bar.

There are kids out there who need you because their parents TRULY starve them. They need you because Daddy puts his cigarettes out on their bodies, because Mommy locks them in a closet for days or because Mommy’s new boyfriend beat them for crying.  The only time we hear about these children is when their faces flash across the screen on the 6 o’clock news because nobody helped them.  But you choose to take MY daughter, who was loved, fed and clothed. A PREEMIE who needed nothing more than a higher calorie formula – which she was put on and thriving before you stole her from my arms with security outside that meeting room – – – as if I were some type of criminal!

You can set up the most impossible obstacles to keep me from her, but just know I will never stop trying.

It kills me to know that the biggest piece of my heart has been taken from me. She barely knows who I am. To her, I’m the unfamiliar face she sees once a week who plays with her through teary eyes for a short time before I just seem to disappear again. The only solace I have is knowing that in the mean time, she is safe and warm and above all LOVED by my family. She isn’t with strangers, but it’s not the same.

I should be feeding her, tucking her into bed at night, changing her diapers. I should be the first face she sees when she opens her eyes in the morning. I should be getting those sleepy cuddles as she’s waking from a restful sleep. Instead, I wait.  I wait for Tuesday afternoon to come around so I can hold her in my arms for just a little while. That ONE short hour out of a 168 hour week is what I look forward to. When I say my goodbyes at the end of each visit, it’s bittersweet because it’s over, but I look forward to the next Tuesday because I know I’ll see her again.

That’s my baby, my entire world. The one thing I’ve done right in my life is what keeps me fighting. I’m in this for the long haul until I get her home forever.”

Most of the parents’ visits with Bella are usually at a DCF office.  A recently released survey of more than 1,500 MA DCF employees commissioned by the Legislature indicates social workers “… complained of department offices infested with rodents and insects …”  Hardly the homey environment to spend what little precious time parents have with their children, but what would a survey of the parents subjected to DCF’s policies yield?  Despite popular belief, not all children taken into state custody were high risk, and even at risk at all.  If they were, study after study has shown that children are more likely to be physically and sexually abused in foster care than if left in their homes.  But once DCF enters parents’ lives, their rights, especially as parents, are no more.  As in almost every other aspect of their lives, DCF decides when, how, where, and IF parents can be with their children once DCF is involved.  Here are some sad outcomes of attempted visits as posted by Bella’s mother:

Fight For Bella     February 27, 2015,  Bella’s parents were both scheduled for visits yesterday.  Her father’s was to be from 12 noon to 2pm, her mother’s visit was supposed to be from 2:15 to 3:15pm.  After confirming the visit via voice mail at 9:35am, complying with the department’s request that all visits must be confirmed by Noon the day prior,  Bella’s mother headed for Lynn on the train a few hours in advance of the visit to ensure she would be on time.  While waiting, a voice mail notification appeared on her phone. The caseworker claimed the visit was not confirmed and was therefore CANCELLED.  She will now have to wait until next week,  making it almost a full month since she has seen her daughter.

During her father’s visit, he introduced some new toys to Bella.  She loved them and played her favorite song for her, “The Hot Dog song”, as featured on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  After feeding her lunch, she began to fall asleep on his shoulder.  In the past, this has never posed a problem as the previous caseworker agreed that it promoted bonding. However, in this particular visit, the new caseworker kept trying to wake Bella up causing her to become increasingly cranky.  At some point, the caseworker decided that Bella was “too tired” to complete the visit with her father and promptly ended it almost a full hour early.  It will easily be another two weeks until he gets to spend time with her again.

Not only are these visits not remotely close to the natural or relaxing environment these infants and children should be in with their parents desperate to bond and cuddle with them, it is also the antithesis of anything conducive to reuniting the family.  Reunification, is a term always said to be the goal by DCF whenever possible, but it is rarely encouraged or nurtured.  Below recounts just one of the highly anticipated holidays that Bella’s parents had hoped to spend with her – – – visits they focus their lives around.  Such a scenario would be hard on any parents, but most especially new parents never availed the opportunity to bond, and live as a family before their first child was ripped from their loving arms.  Making things all the more trying in getting these scant one hour visits that Massachusetts provides the parents of Bella, is the fact that their home is in another state – – – 23 hours away.

April 1, 2015  Spending my Easter at a fast food restaurant. Emailed DCF to see if I could do extended hours on Sunday instead of the normal Thursday from 3 to 4 o’clock. I told her if this wasn’t possible, Thursday would be fine. Just got a voicemail back saying NO for Easter and tomorrow’s visit is cancelled, because apparently I didn’t “confirm” for tomorrow.  Can’t stop crying.

— feeling heartbroken.

How this tragic situation of Baby Bella came to be is hardly unique as far as her being medically kidnapped.  The most renowned story of a medical kidnap is that of Justina Pelletier, a 14-year old teen from the state of Connecticut, also taken from Boston Children’s Hospital.  Like Justina, Bella was also made a ward of the state of Massachusetts despite residing in another state.  Justina’s story, along with other stories of children being medically kidnapped from children’s hospitals around the country can be found here.  But these stories only represent the smallest fraction of such cases.

Medical kidnapping is just now starting to become more recognized. Most of the general populous refuses to believe that it is happening at all.  Moreover elected officials don’t know the extent that the state can, and will, take custody of children unjustly, along with the nightmare this is causing.  Most comfort themselves with the misplaced belief that children are only removed from their homes and families for very compelling reasons.  They certainly don’t believe doctors or hospitals would intentionally go against their Hippocratic Oath of “do no harm“.  The fact is they are doing so at an alarming rate.  Most frightening of all is how they literally steal these children from their loving parents and put them up for adoption by permanently terminating parental rights.  These child protective agencies DO NOT have the children’s best interests in mind and that can be proved over and over, if only people were privy to what is really going on behind the scenes.  The stories are horrific, and never ending, but not believed by the unaffected.  These families fight this Goliath alone and rarely win without public support and outrage.  The Fight for Bella story is typical of government overreach in taking children and making them wards of the state, but there are hundreds of thousand more this is happening to that you will never hear about.

Just weeks before Bella was taken by Boston Children’s Hospital, Isaiah Rider was taken from Lurie Children’s Hospital, and around the country this is happening on an almost daily basis –  TODAY’s story:  Four Boys in South Carolina Medically Kidnapped When Parents Ask for Second Opinion.  Yesterday’s Michigan Family Traumatized by CPS in Medical Kidnapping of Twins and on it goes, everyday, all across the country, with little notice as the media is consumed with Confederate flags and Lions, over the sale of babies parts, and babies.

Thousands more children than you will ever hear of were all taken by Children’s hospitals while only the FREE JUSTINA movement received both national, and international media attention.  Even then, not a thing has changed. 

No one heard a word about these other kidnappings even while the public and media’s full attention and outrage was on Justina, and children’s hospitals across the country were doing exactly what was being protested in the Pelletiers’s case concurrently.  Indeed, Boston Children’s hospital took Baby Bella from her parents at the height of public awareness of what they had just done to Justina that was being adamantly protested by thousands!

Out of Health Impact News was born the site, Medical Kidnap, a site devoted to exposing all of these type stories.  As the site continued to break more stories, this new found public awareness of medical kidnapping that previously seemed to be exclusive to Justina has seen no limits on the number of kids taken, and even less limits on the reasons for taking them.  The site cannot keep up with the stories coming in to them, and in some cases, these stories are reaching over a million hits in less than 24 hours.  Here is their story on Baby Bella:

Another Medical Kidnapping at Boston Children’s Hospital: Baby Seized Over Formula Disagreement 

Until these stories start reaching all of America, and become universally accepted as real, wrong, and that this could happen to anyone, the affected families suffer tragic losses financially, emotionally, and all too often even losing their children, permanently, when they have done absolutely nothing wrong.  We MUST start taking note of what is going on across the country, and in our individual respective states.  This destruction of children and families has long lasting, and far reaching ramifications of parental rights, family preservation and value, and societal and economic implications that affect each and every one of us.

To get an idea of the breadth of this epidemic facing America right now . . .

To get an idea of the breadth of this epidemic facing America right now . . . here’s just a few of the stories from MedicalKidnap.Com and US that are horrible, and will have long lasting, permanent effects and damages, but have at least seen their children returned, in large part because of public outrage and exposure:

Medical Kidnap? Mother Loses 3 Children Because “Daughter is Too Short”

Teen Forced to Undergo Chemotherapy Denied Visitation with Mom, Must Stay in Hospital  

VICTORY against CPS corruption and tyranny!!!

Medical Kidnapping in Chicago: DCFS Does Not Want You to Know What They are Doing to 3 Year Old Malik   

Malik and his grandmother Lakisha. Source: For the love of Malik Facebook page.

and, of course, there is JUSTINA, still very much suffering from what was done to her by Boston Children’s Hospital and MASSACHUSETTS.  It’s long past time for Baby Bella to go home!

Please familiarize yourself with how much this is occurring and continue to follow the many similar stories occurring every day, across the country.  Just as the Pelletiers could not take on this Goliath alone, neither can ANY of these other families.

THEY NEED YOU and your support. 

Please “like” the Fight For Bella facebook page, and A Miracle for US to help support these families.  Please consider donating to the Fight for Bella Fund, and share these stories wherever you can:  http://www.gofundme.com/fightforbella2015

Part III of the Fight For Bella continues HERE: The Kidnapping of Bella by BCH and DCF

ALL children belong under the protective umbrella of LOVING PARENTS

SIGN the Parental Rights Petition HERE . . . BEFORE they come for you, and do what you can to share this story, and raise public awareness so these families don’t fight this Goliath alone.