Gone without a Warrant

Sarah and Josh were a young couple in Boston, raising two boys and building a happy life together. But one night, everything changed. After bringing their 3-month-old to the ER with a fever, a series of events spiraled out of control, ending with both their children taken from their home in the middle of the night, without a warrant. Their story exposes how a system meant to protect kids can tear a family apart. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
He says, Sarah, there's a real possibility that they can
be trying to take cal today. You need to get
out of the hospital. Do whatever you can to leave
the hospital.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Welcome to the Knife. I'm Hannah Smith.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm Patia Eaton. Today we're speaking with Sarah Perkins, and
we'll also hear from her husband, Josh Sabee, but he
had to leave the room a little early on in
the interview to watch over their children. In July of
twenty twenty two, 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.

(00:55):
It would involve the Department of Children and Family, law
enforcement and attorneys. 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.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
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 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.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
What were you looking forward to most about being parents?
Were you always wanting to have a family.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, I remember feeling apprehensive about being a parent. You know.
It's just it's such 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

(02:10):
it took a little over a year of trying before
we were able to conceive, and we ended up losing
that first pregnancy around thirteen 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

(02:31):
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

(02:51):
there would be an equal distribution of labor and support.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
After Sarah received her master's degree in North Carolina, she
and Josh moved to Boston and they were expecting a baby.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
So she showed up very pregnant to her first class
for PhD and then gave birth between semesters and then
went back to class six weeks.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
I had to get back to class or you lose
your funding.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Josh and Sarah found a community in Boston that fell
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.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
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 in these.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
People in the summer, they would close down Moody Street
to cars, so 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 biking, and so he was biking up
and down Moody Street. He was a known feature on
Moody Street over the summers.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Also because he really loved wearing his dinosaur costume when
we went grocery shop me, so he's recognizable in that
sense as well. By July of twenty twenty two, we
had just had our second baby and I was finishing
up on campus work for my PhD program. I had
passed my prospectives a month after my kid was born.

(04:23):
I remember breastfeeding him through the prospectives 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

(04:45):
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
his mom would take him and have him with her.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
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 wrapps, you
returned to Massachusetts. So take us to the morning of
July twelfth.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
I had gone to a playgroup 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

(05:40):
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 noticed him vomiting all of his feeds, or if
his fever spikes above one hundred and three, that we
needed to take him to the hospital. And so I
just you know, kept an eye on him throughout the day,

(06:00):
and then it was that night he woke up vomiting
again and I checked his temperature and it was like
one hundred and three point seven 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

(06:23):
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 thirteenth that I had taken baby
to the hospital.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
And when you say hospital, you're you're go into the
emergency room.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, to the emergency room of Newton Wellesley Hospital, Okay.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
And when you got there, how did it start out?

Speaker 2 (06:43):
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 tasted his blat oxygen levels and his
blood oxygen was low. That was the biggest concern. So

(07:04):
they put oxygen blowing by him so that he was
getting enough oxygen. And then they catheterized him so that
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

(07:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
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. Happened at the hospital and it

(08:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
People came in for morning grounds 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

(08:33):
run now to meet our legal liability, we have to
run them regardless of your consent. 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 it

(08:53):
in any way? Will it impact his life? You know?
Is there concerns about 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 open.
This outher can of worms that we now have to

(09:14):
look into.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
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?

Speaker 2 (09:27):
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

(09:49):
would indicate child abuse or anything like that. I think
I felt frustrated that we would be running these tests
when I was concerned about my kid's oxygen when his
fever was, when he had just had such a terrible night,
to now have to be taken to all of these
other tests, but sad and frustrating.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
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?

Speaker 2 (10:21):
They didn't say a child abuse when 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, reduce
the severity of the situation. I had no sense that
like the integrity of our family was at stake. So

(10:42):
my child and I were wheeled to the eskeletal 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 being my
little three month old infant in these really contorted positions,

(11:04):
and he's screaming, and the texts are like behind this
like literal iron curtain so that they don't get the
radiation that there's viewing onto my child, right and my
baby he screamed so much that he loses his voice
at a time when I already know that he needs
to be on oxygen, that they told me he needs
to be on oxygen. It felt so horrible and I

(11:28):
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? 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

(11:49):
they hand me 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 concent 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

(12:09):
want to sign the consent form. And then there was
this 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.

(12:34):
They bring it up to me and I signed 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. We was Josh's
reaction to the situation when you spoke with him, I

(12:54):
think it was similar to mine. And I think like
part of what's at play in this 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

(13:18):
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 doesn't reaction immediately was like, oh, I wonder
if it was a birth injury, you know, I wonder

(13:39):
if like squeezing through the birth canal could have caused
us injury. He's young enough that seemed plausible.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
So Sarah's first reaction to learning about her baby's REP
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

(14:16):
are now suspected a possible child abuse.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
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 RSP, which is what our baby had. So
everybody's like masked, gowned hat, you know, like everything intense

(14:40):
protective equipment. And so she comes in and says, when
we're looking for non accidental trauma, we're looking for trauma
that was no 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 sny interrogation of me and of what's happened.

(15:04):
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 weeks ago, and we picked him up, We
soothed him, he was comforted pretty quick. I looked up
on the American Academy Pediatrics what to do, and they said,
if he doesn't show these signs of concussion, then he's fine.

(15:26):
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 put him on the bed like running it
a diaper or something, and my husband was in the
room just facing the other direction because he was working.

(15:48):
He'd 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
like 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,

(16:11):
loving parent that my immediate response was to roll my eyes,
which killed me. The social worker, her name was still Sex,
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

(16:35):
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,

(16:56):
And so she leaves sort of on that note, I
see you rolling your eyes, I'll be back.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, you know, I understand right that, like probably hospitals
on our high alert for identifying child abuse. But it's
interesting in 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

(17:25):
in there as well as her interpretation of your husband
ignoring the child when he's working, and that it 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.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
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 recommended to her that she
should ask some other questions. So here's the other questions.
Is there a story of domestic violence? Have the police
ever visited your home? You know? Do you have food insecurity? Like?

(18:07):
Is there substance misbuse? 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.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
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 basinette. 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

(19:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
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 perceiving oxygen. She wanted that to be the priority.
She'd cried holding him down for blood draws, seeing that

(19:47):
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

(20:09):
need to be observed for a second night. So of
course Sarah stayed with him.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
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.

(20:36):
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

(20:57):
can we get out? You said that the marker for
being able to leave the hospital as 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

(21:17):
they'll be in soon. The doctors will be in soon.
Here the next stop, they'll be in soon, and they
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

(21:38):
looks like, you know, 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

(21:58):
while I'm waiting for whatever going to happen to happen.
You know, my father in law had found a lawyer
for us, and 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.

(22:20):
Like that's just what's going to happen. They're going to
take the baby. They're going to arrest you.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Apparently, Josh during this time called our pediatrician, our kids
primary care pediatrician, Andjit 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 gonna let him go, and

(23:08):
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

(23:30):
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 basinette
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 gonna be okay and it's going to be fine,
and then we just spend this like halcyon day. The

(23:51):
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 H and I are
like literally holding hands in bed that night like this
this tender relief almost cliche image of like sweetness and tenderness.

(24:11):
We're like just falling asleep and then we hear a
knock at our door and that's when everything happens.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
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
story being you know, national news, that there might be
people that assume that there was abuse or something.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
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

(25:24):
me quieted any 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

(25:44):
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 would have ever tried to hurt them. 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

(26:06):
like I'm maybe well lingering or something, But again, I
think it's the reality of information asymmetry, 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.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
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 stated. 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

(26:42):
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?

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Okay, So there's a knock at the door, like the
loudest knock I've ever heard in my entire life, and
Waltham Police out. Wiltham Police open up, and Josh goes
and opens the door. He leaves the chain lock on it,
so the door has just opened a crack, and I
remember hearing a woman's voice saying she was there from
the Department of Children, and families, and we needed to

(27:15):
let them in, and I just remember this feeling of unreality,
like this can't be 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 five
pm that night, our caseworker had come to our house
to get eyes on the kids before the weekend, and

(27:37):
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

(28:00):
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

(28:21):
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.
That's what it feels like. You're just like moving and

(28:43):
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

(29:05):
lawyer answers, and he calls the police superiors and they
tell him basically, if we don't give up the kids,
they're gonna 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 him
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

(29:30):
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.
I rest for the baby, and I remember they didn't

(29:54):
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 struck my
baby in and they asked if it would make me
feel better if I was the one to put them
in the car. I just remember the callousness of that.

(30:18):
What's going to make me feel better right now? He
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,

(30:40):
but we'll call a pediatrician. And that's a 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.
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, the desirest

(31:01):
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

(31:25):
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.

(31:47):
Come with me, Mommy, Daddy, don't make me go. He
was crushing, you know. We tried to put him in
his car seat and he was just crashing. And then
I remember the caseworkers trying to like force him into
the car and watching and being totally helpless. It's not

(32:07):
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
as upsetting your child, so we want you to go
into your home. Well, we force him into the car

(32:28):
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

(32:48):
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,

(33:09):
figure it out on Monday.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Pretty immediately, there was a bunch of people already like
looking up by laws 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 core order, basically like if you take kids under

(33:54):
the B three Order, which is the order that supposedly
gives them the legal right to take kids without any
kind of war or paperwork or court order, then you're
supposed to place them with kinship, with kin Care next
to kin 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 and your bylaws.

(34:16):
That needs to happen. And they said, well, we're not
sure that we can do that.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
How long is it until you're able to get some
kind of answer about where they are and where were they?

Speaker 2 (34:29):
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 six pm 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.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
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 lead steps forward are pretty complicated,
and so what does the next week look like for you?

Speaker 2 (35:06):
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, 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,

(35:27):
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

(35:48):
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

(36:10):
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 the system.
I think it was two hours at a time, three

(36:33):
times a day, which is extremely liberal 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

(36:57):
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

(37:19):
need to, like buckle Town and really prove that they
were right to take the kids.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
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?

Speaker 2 (37:43):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
A month later, the seventy two hour hearing happened. Seventy
two hour here and child custody cases are supposed to
take place within the first seventy two hours the children
are removed from their home, but 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.

(38:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
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 rib fracture.

(38:52):
Like every doctor who review the case testified to that.
The doctor for the Department of Children Family said that
she thinks it was a few dayside 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

(39:13):
pediatrician testify that, you know, she had never seen any
cause for concern. We'd attended every child well visit, she
had seen the kid as recently as a few weeks before,
and she hadn't noticed the rib fracture, for any indication
of the rib fracture. I think all of that coalesced
to us getting what's called conditional custody.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
This was huge.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
They cried tears of relief. Sarah remembers putting their son
Clearance to bed that evening.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
We sang him his favorite songs and read them books.
And then I think it was really like that first
night that the night terror 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 know,

(40:08):
I just remember holding him and his arms wind milling
and just this inconsolable terror that continued for in about
an hour every single night, you know, like a night terror.
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

(40:29):
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

(40:50):
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 be strong,
and we can appreciate how our whole family came and
helped us and took care of us. And that's what

(41:10):
family does. Family takes care of each other no matter what.
There's this pediatrician who was describing separations at the border
and he describes the experience of child separation as shrapnel
in the brain, where it's this thing that it's going
to be with you and with your kids forever. Like
it's not something that you just get over, you know.

(41:31):
Even as recently as a few months ago, we watched
Lilo and Stitch with my boy totally forgot about the
CPS plotline in it. We watched the originally Lelo 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

(41:54):
do you say to that, Like, how do you express
to a six year old this terrible thing happened. It
shouldn't have ever happened, But we have to live. If
you have to keep living and trying to do good
and trying to help other people where you can.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
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 in AP News anyway all these other places.

(42:45):
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

(43:08):
the courthouse and looking out over the galley to this
other case that was happening, and there is this thirteen
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

(43:29):
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 case worker was just
cool and professional whatever. 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 were doing their best

(43:51):
trying to keep up with these like additional rocks that
were throwing at them when they're already treading water.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
What do you think isn't working or could be done better?
And what kind of work have you all been doing
around that?

Speaker 2 (44:06):
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 eighty five percent
of child welfare cases. So eighty five percent of child
welfare cases are for what's called neglect, which is in
practice most of the time related to conditions of poverty.

(44:29):
You know, like if the kid doesn't have a lunch,
if the kid doesn't have adequate childcare, 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 eighty five percent of
investigations and removals are for reasons of neglect. If we
changed what gets reported so that we're not actually reporting

(44:50):
neglective people to a system that's really their only tool
is either removable or the threat of removal to coerce behavior,
which makes some sense. Maybe 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

(45:13):
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

(45:33):
difference in making kids safer, actually in supporting families and
making kids safer because foster care, decades of research is
shown is actually usually not very safe for kids. 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

(45:55):
department in 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 core orders or warrants, so that they're behold
into the constitution in a way that they're just not
right now. So that's one of the biggest changes that

(46:16):
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 and a court hearing, and so
there's just like perverse incentives that are obviously at work there.

(46:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
There was a pro public a study several years ago,
like two thousand and two or something like that where
they looked into searches and seizures enacted by child welfare
workers in New York and it was something like ninety
six percent, right, ninety six percent of search and seizures
by child welfare officials happened without a warrant, happened without

(47:22):
court orders or any kind of ever having a 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

(47:46):
have written like bylaws that allow them to sort of
hop over the fourth and fourteenth Amendments. I would say
that in most states they're legal, but I think in
no state are they constitutional.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
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

(48:20):
are we talking about here?

Speaker 2 (48:22):
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 is being run through, and they
asked her 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,

(48:42):
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

(49:03):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
One hundred percent. And so, how is this, you know,
continue 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?

(49:33):
You know, what have been sort of the longer term
changes that have happened as a result of this.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Yeah, So I just want to underscore, like I think
in many ways, our CPS case was really fortunate, really
clearly marked by 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
kid to an emergency room at this point. I don't

(49:59):
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

(50:21):
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.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Curiously, our kid, who is 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

(50:55):
did not bring it up with and that wasn't something
that we were like, hey, do you remember, you know, yeah,
just totally unprompted. He had nine 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,

(51:18):
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 do 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

(51:38):
democracy and security and home. These 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 am 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

(52:00):
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

(52:22):
in this system has access to that, and so I
think societally, we have a responsibility to care for the
least advantage in our society. I think those are the
families that disproportionately or 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 nineteen fifties mom or something. But every single

(52:46):
family that I have ever spoken to, and I've spoken
to hundreds now who have been caught in this system,
cared deeply about their kids and are completely dedicated to
their happiness and their well being and their help and
their long term success. And I think it's important to
remember that people will take care of their kids. People
who can't take care of themselves take care of their kids,

(53:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
I love that interview with Sarah.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
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 problem that exists in
the way that families are treated in situations like this one. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
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

(54:20):
end up actually doing a chest X right, 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.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
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, that probably feels.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Bad to you.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
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

(55:24):
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

(55:44):
story on the knife was that, yes, they are telling
their story, but this problem is, you know something that
is actually pretty expansive.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Yeah, you know, I haven't read the lawsuit, but you did,
so tell me, like, what's going on with their lawsuit?

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Yeah? So as we know, this happened to them in
twenty twenty two. So in May of twenty twenty three,
Sarah and Josh faul to complaint against several individual officials
within the police department in 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

(56:22):
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

(56:44):
literally have no paperwork, no warrant, nothing, no order, nothing,
and they'd just say give me your kids. I mean,
it is the most Unamerican thing I've ever heard, Like,
no one should be able to just beat your door
down and take your children.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Sarah said in the interview that this is happening all
of the time.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
And she's right, and 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

(57:25):
to step in and take custody of their children.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
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 This is not
a typical case, right, but she, you know, she spoke
about that, right.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Yeah. So in March of twenty twenty four, 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 some thing that's called qualified immunity. And qualified immunity
is the quick explanation of it is that it's a

(58:08):
legal doctrine that protects government officials from individual liability and
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,

(58:28):
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

(58:50):
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 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

(59:11):
children from a home, but then the investigation takes place
and the children are returned. Well, if an 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

(59:31):
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.

(59:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
And is part 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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
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
that we touched on, which is that this problem goes

(01:00:42):
far beyond them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
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

(01:01:04):
this story so complicated is that Sarah gets thrust into
the 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

(01:01:25):
imagine that 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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Know that it's far fair to parents, because you don't
want people to be afraid to bring their children into
the hospital.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Yeah, but there's something about like like act accidents happen.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
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

(01:02:24):
such an 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.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Yeah, And it was just like one person that looked
over the file that they'd never met, that had, you know, yeah,
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
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

(01:03:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Agreed. Sarah mentioned this, and I thought it was I
don't know. I'm just so glad that she 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,

(01:03:47):
Like and she's like, it's not like we're talking about it.
It's not like we're like, remember when you're ripped out
of the house, Like we don't want to remind him
of that, But every year on the anniversary has like
a sleep terre 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

(01:04:07):
their kids were for twenty four 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

(01:04:28):
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'd 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,

(01:04:48):
is not something you ever get over.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
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, ever get over
it like it shouldn't be happening. It should not be happening.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Yeah, thank you for listening.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
We'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia
dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at
the Knife podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
This has been an exactly Right production hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and me Paysha Ey.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport Artwork
five vansa Lilac executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark
and Danielle Kramer