A Northwest Washington couple, wrongly accused of child abuse, is speaking out about their personal nightmare, including having their infant daughters taken away and their desperate fight to get them back.
Greg and Julianna Caplan said the very agency that is supposed to protect children in the District, caused their daughters harm. When her two daughters were just eight-months-old, new Mother Julianna Caplan heard a thud. "And I heard her cry. So I turned around to look and she was pushing herself up off the floor and her arms went out and she bonked her head again."
Later that day, when the baby was acting out of sorts, the Caplans brought her to Children's Hospital. Doctors found retinal hemorrhaging, which is a possible sign of shaken baby syndrome. Authorities quickly launched a child abuse investigation.
"When they first told me someone might have shaken her, it just seemed so wrong," said Julianna.
Further tests revealed the baby has a pre-existing neurological condition which likely caused the hemorrhages. By that point, D.C.'s Child and Family Services Agency was already moving forward.
"Without an investigation, without a medical diagnosis, without interviewing any of the doctors, they had made a decision that my daughter had been abused," said Greg. "A social worker said to me, we're going to remove the other child," said Julianna.
After midnight, with one baby at Children's Hospital, Greg Caplan was at home, waking up his other daughter who was about to be taken away and put in foster care. "I took her outside and she was fine in my arms. And there were these four police officers and the CFSA social worker didn't even have an infant car seat," said Greg.
"It felt like everyone within that agency just thought it was no big deal to take a baby from its home and it is a big deal," said Julianna.
Peter Nickles, D.C. General Counsel, said he agonized over the Caplan case when asked by the mayor to look into it. "There was a basis to do what it was that CFSA did. If I had been in that position, faced with the facts, would I have done the same thing? I don't know because you can't go back and replay history."
Despite a police report that states, "all five examining physicians made no medical diagnoses or cause to support physical abuse," and a judge who later found "no probable cause… to believe (the baby) was abused…," the Caplans were prosecuted for more than two months for child abuse and neglect.
Although their case was eventually dismissed, they remain on D.C.'s Child Abuse Registry, pending an appeal.
"When you have five examining physicians saying this baby wasn't abused. You have a judge who rules that there is no abuse here. Why were we still caught up in this? And why did the government still come after us," asked Julianna.
"What the law says is if a mistake is going to be made, it ought to be made in favor of protecting the child until the law and the procedures have been implemented," said Nickles.
Child advocate Richard Wexler with theNational Coalition for Child Protection Reform said the Caplan's case is not unusual. "For once, CFSA took on a family that has the resources to fight back. Overwhelmingly, this is a system that inflicts its harm on poor children. Very often poverty itself is confused with neglect."
It took the Caplans nearly two weeks to get their daughters back, which is a speed they were told was record-setting. "To know that right now, there are innocent families, without a doubt, in D.C. that do not have their children and have no way of getting them back weighs on us heavily," said Greg.
Since the highly publicized Banita Jacks case, CFSA is now removing twice the number of children from their homes and putting them into foster case. Meantime, the Caplans have already racked up more than $75,000 in legal fees to get their daughters back and try to clear their name.
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