In 2008, 36-year-old William "David" O'Shell, a police officer, and his wife 25-year-old Tiffany Cuin-O'Shell, were found dead in the couple's Lakewood Colorado home, victims of an apparent murder-suicide late on a Sunday night. Less than a month earlier, the couple's 3-month-old daughter had been removed from their care under suspicion of child abuse, after a visit to the hospital revealed multiple unexplained fractures and a broken leg.The Denver Post reports more details:
According to 9News, Dave O'Shell became the prime suspect for his daughter's "serious injuries" and likely faced arrest for felony child abuse. Reports indicate Dave--presumably mortified by allegations of child abuse--proceeded to shoot his wife while she slept, then took his own life.
Mistaken allegations of child abuse lead to murder-suicide before baby's rare genetic disorder found ...Lawsuits go nowhere in a case like this. The fundamental problem here is that (1) parents do not go around deliberately breaking the legs of their baby, (2) there would be no prosecution if CPS were to admit this, but (3) CPS could not justify its existence if it were to admit that it ruins lives for the sake of preventing something that never happens anyway.
Two weeks before, on June 17, 2008, Adams County child protection
workers had taken Alyssa and handed her to a foster mother. They did so after a hospital found 11 broken bones in Alyssa's 3-month-old legs, but no bruises or other signs of abuse.
Dave and Tiffany had been allowed to see their daughter just once in those two weeks. Tiffany's lawyer was advising her to divorce her husband if she ever wanted her baby back. Clouds of suspicion swirled around Dave. Police were about to arrest him, he thought, for felony child abuse. He had grown more despondent day by day.
Nobody seemed to hear the family's pleas that there must be some other explanation for all those broken bones. ...
Three and a half years later, Paul and Jackie Cuin shared their account of a family tragedy, hoping to broaden knowledge about a genetic killer of infants and to spare someone else from mistaken accusations of child abuse. They also want Colorado to give accused parents better ways to appeal if a child protection agency balks at performing tests that could disprove abuse.
There are tribes in New Guinea where a witch doctor has the responsibility of keeping the evil spirits away. If anyone questions his rituals, then he reminds them how bad evil spirits could be.
CPS is no better than the witch doctor. Denver get O'Shell a gun and trusted him to use it to enforce the laws. And yet CPS did not trust him to hold his own baby! No good ever comes from these interventions.
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