The Free Press
Readers of The Free Press are smart, opinionated, and ideologically diverse. That means we get a lot of really fascinating letters. We can’t publish all of them, but every month, we print a handful that have us talking in the office.
First up this month, a response to Jennifer Block’s piece on shaken baby syndrome, which ran last week. In it, she wrote about Robert Roberson, who has been on death row in Texas since 2003, having been convicted for supposedly rocking his baby too hard.
We received a letter from Mike Wrenn, who served as juror on a shaken baby syndrome case in New Hampshire:
I recently served on a jury here in Manchester, New Hampshire, in a case about a father accused of harming his 10-week-old child. The father was accused of shaking his daughter and inflicting fluid buildup in her brain. After listening to all of the witnesses and other evidence, it was very clear that there was a great deal of reasonable doubt. After the case was sent to the jury, we deliberated for no more than 45 minutes and unanimously decided that the defendant was not guilty.
In fact, the vast majority of the jury was taken aback by the circumstances that led to the father being charged with this offense in the first place. It seemed obvious to many of us that the evidence was fairly weak, yet Child Services and the police were convinced that charges should be brought against the father.
For example, the first hospital the baby was brought to for evaluation did an X-ray of her skull and determined that there was a skull fracture. The child was subsequently transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital, and their test indicated that there was in fact no fracture; instead, it was a slight separation of the dura. Big red flag. The children’s hospital did not perform any procedures on the child to treat the fluid buildup. She was held for observation and released the following day.
The defense’s expert witness was a very well-regarded pediatric physician who reported that this condition is not that uncommon in newborn babies. (He also presented a very compelling explanation for the buildup of fluid in this child’s brain.) The prosecution team had deposed the defense’s expert witness and were aware of his testimony and findings, and yet they moved the case forward.
The baby is now a healthy 2-year-old little girl. Her father was restricted from seeing his daughter for two years. To quote your article, “With shaken baby syndrome, the last adult with the child is essentially presumed guilty.”
When the verdict was read in the courtroom, I saw both the relief and sadness in the father’s face. There is no doubt that child abuse is a serious problem in this country. However, hospitals, doctors, and law enforcement have to stop being so quick to rush to judgment. The consequences are devastating to the accused when they are innocent.
Another reader had a very different response to Block’s piece. Lindly Theroux is an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Here’s what she had to say:
As a double board-certified physician in pediatrics and pediatric emergency medicine, I have seen thousands of children for numerous different reasons. And sadly, I have seen cases of shaken baby syndrome. So Jennifer Block’s argument that shaken baby syndrome does not exist troubled me.
In her piece, she writes: “In many hospitals, when a young child arrives in an emergency room, a process unfolds to identify if the patient is a victim of violence.” To me, this is blatantly false. Child abuse is a serious allegation; few doctors would jump to the conclusion that it had occurred, though all of us know that it happens.
I was also alarmed to read that “After evidence of widespread satanic torture failed to materialize, several of the physicians who gave credence to the phenomenon pivoted in the 1990s to advocacy about fatally shaken babies.” This article poses that all doctors are out to get parents without even looking into other diagnoses when that is far from true.
Sadly, in my experience, many children who are diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome have other injuries not limited to the brain. I have seen numerous infants too young to walk—and therefore too young to fall—who have not only symptoms associated with shaken baby syndrome (such as retinal hemorrhages), but also healing rib, arm, and leg fractures. These are signs of abuse.
Shaken baby syndrome also has some clear symptoms. The article proposes that serious brain bleeds in children can be the result of minor falls, rather than shaken baby syndrome. While this is true, in my experience, falls often involve a skull fracture—unlike shaken baby syndrome. Also, I get brain scans on hundreds of children for minor falls, including infants who often fall out of sleeping parents’ arms, and they rarely show bleeds—again, unlike shaken baby syndrome.
I suspect some will read my response and think, Just another doctor refusing to go against medical dogma, but that is not the case. I do think the medical community is far too rigid and unwilling to reevaluate previously held beliefs, and that can be extremely damaging to public trust, as in the case of the pandemic. I recognize that there is significant nuance in medicine and that there are likely wrongfully convicted parents, which is a tragedy. But to paint with such a broad brush and state that shaken baby syndrome is junk science is false and dangerous. I have seen the cases firsthand.
Should subminimum wage jobs be legal? In her most recent essay for The Free Press, autism advocate Jill Escher argued: Yes, because they’re often the only path to employment for adults like her two children, who are autistic and nonverbal.
“Although advocates may long for a world where employers are willing to hire people with severe disabilities and accommodate their needs, in reality most businesses simply can’t afford to do this,” she wrote. She argues that subminimum wage job programs—sometimes called “sheltered workshops”—give such people a life-affirming chance to contribute to society. “I have spoken to many individuals who earn subminimum wages,” she wrote, “and for them, the money is almost never the point.”
Some of our readers disagreed with this argument—including Sara Allard, who is autistic. She wrote to explain why eliminating the subminimum wage job might be a win for the disabled community:
Jill Escher’s article really hit home for me, but not in a comforting way. I am autistic, and even though I’m often called “high-functioning,” I share many of the same barriers to employment that her children do. I don’t have a driver’s license, and probably never will. I have the motor skills of a 6-year-old, even after a year of occupational therapy. Both of these things make it impossible for me to get the fast-food or factory jobs available in my rural town.
After I graduated high school, my service providers told me that vocational rehab would be the answer to my prayers. I was promised job coaches, training and, most importantly to me, an income. So imagine my disappointment when the only choices vocational rehab offered me were unpaid volunteer work, or folding napkins at a local diner for less than $3 per hour. I didn’t feel a sense of pride or responsibility from these “job offers.” I felt infantilized, betrayed, and lied to. It was just another pinch of salt in an all-too-common wound: Service providers promising to help me live as independent a life as possible, but then adding barriers to that independence at every turn.
That’s why to me, personally, Jill’s claim that money is meaningless to the disabled rings hollow. This sentimental portrayal of disabled people might make the average American feel warm and fuzzy, but the truth is far more complicated. The disabled can’t always be neatly divided between those who can thrive in normal workspaces and those who cannot. Employment for employment’s sake isn’t fulfilling for me, and many other autistic people across the spectrum agree. I need actual money to navigate my community, visit friends, and participate in the activities that bring me joy. It’s a well-known fact that it’s more expensive to be disabled than it is to be healthy. Disabled people need extra care, medicine, specialized equipment, and even specialized diets. Disability advocates aren’t unreasonable for wanting to be paid a living wage for their work.
Is getting rid of sheltered workshops as a whole an overcorrection? Maybe. However, eliminating the subminimum wage is still a win for the disability community in the long term. It could be the beginning of a new era of accessible employment. What if there is a way to help sheltered workshops pay minimum wage? Until we stop promoting the comforting lie that money means nothing to the disabled, we’ll never find out.
Over the weekend, Joe Nocera wrote a delightful essay about the glory days of magazines in 1990s New York, when editors flew business class and contributors were sent flowers just for meeting a deadline. To illustrate the profligacy of that era of journalism, he began with an anecdote about his first lunch with Art Cooper—the late, legendary editor of GQ magazine. They drank several glasses of cognac, and never set eyes on the bill, because “it was sent directly to the Condé Nast accounting department.” (Condé Nast is the parent company of GQ.)
In response, Joe received the following email from the great novelist Thomas Mallon, who was once GQ’s literary editor:
The only time I ever saw Art blow his stack over expenses came when the kids in the fashion department sent in a request for reimbursement for $800. Their entire itemization consisted of one word: “Snacks.”
If this article, or any others you’ve read in The Free Press, have changed your mind, sparked an interesting conversation, or even angered you, we want to hear from you! We invite you to send your thoughts to letters@thefp.com.