Posted on 04/29/2013 10:11:33 AM PDT by Sopater
A young Russian couple living in California is struggling to understand the events of the past few weeks, which began with a trip to the hospital and continued days later with police forcing entry into the couple’s home to take their child.
Anna Nikolayev and her husband Alex brought their five-month-old boy Sammy to Sacramento’s Sutter Memorial Hospital after he began exhibiting flu symptoms. He had been diagnosed with a heart murmur at birth, according to News 10, a local ABC affiliate.
Sammy was admitted to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, at which point his mother witnessed a nurse administering the baby with antibiotics, apparently without instructions from the doctor.
“I asked her, ‘For what is that?’ And she’s like ‘I don’t know.’ And then I said ‘You’re working as a nurse and you don’t he know what you’re giving my baby?’” Anna struggled to explain through her tears.
Mrs. Nikolayev added that a doctor said the child should not have been given antibiotics, although they did want to perform heart surgery on Sammy immediately. At that point, Anna said, the couple decided to rush Sammy out of the hospital in search of a second opinion on his condition.
“If [they made] one mistake after another, I don’t want to let my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” she said.
The parents traveled directly from Sutter Memorial to Kaiser Medical Center in Sacramento, where doctors released Sammy to the care of his parents.
“I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents,” a note from a doctor said. Anna and Alex were forced to show the note to police, who came to the second hospital, presumably after staff at Sutter Memorial called 911.
“The police showed up there. They saw the baby was fine,” Anna told News 10. “They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought this baby was dying in our arms. So police saw the report from doctors and said, ‘Okay, you guys have a good day,’ then walked away.”
But just one day later, police showed up at the Nikolayevs’ home with Child Protective Services (CPS) representatives. Alex met the authorities outside, wondering what multiple squad cars were doing at his house.
“I was pushed against the building, smacked down,” Alex said. “I said, ‘Am I being placed under arrest?’ He smacked me to the ground and yelled out ‘I think I got the keys to the house!’”
Alex later told reporters, “It doesn’t seem like parents have any rights whatsoever.”
During the commotion in the driveway Anna had set up a camera pointing at the door. At least four police officers, who did not have a warrant, are shown on film barging into the home followed by CPS workers demanding Sammy.
“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me, okay?” one policeman can be heard telling Anna.
Explanations have been hard to come by. Law enforcement referred media requests to CPS, who refused to offer a definitive statement other than claiming Sammy was taken because of “severe neglect,” a vague definition the Nikolayevs have denied.
“We conduct a risk assessment of the child’s safety and rely heavily on the direction of health care providers,” CPS said.
The Nikolayevs and their attorney, Joe Weinberger, expressed disbelief that Sammy was still in the hospital without their consent during an interview with the ABC affiliate.
“It’s absolutely amazing to me how a government can reach out and snatch a child after a doctor said there’s not an issue,” Weinberger said. “As we’ve seen, there is no emergency situation in this case...I can’t imagine having my baby ripped from my arms.”
Attorney Weinberger provided RT viewers with more details into the case, saying that the entire case against the Nikolayev family was “manufactured.”
“They were provided with medical evidence that said that the baby was fine to be taken home and despite this, they manufactured an excuse to take this baby away,” Weinberger said
The initial physician who examined the child, Weinberger believes, is partly responsible for the situation.
“I think what it comes down to is that parents didn’t appreciate the opinion of the doctor in a hospital and wanted to seek a second opinion,” attorney said.
But the lawyer also admits that the parents are partly responsible for the CPS course of action.
“The mistake that they made was without signing out the child, they left the hospital and went to a different hospital and in my opinion what they did upset the initial physician and he decided to make a call to the Child Protective Services and say that there’s a child who is in imminent danger of death. What he did not know at that time was that they had gone to a second hospital and a different doctor said- no, it is not an issue.”
A court hearing is scheduled for Monday, April 29.
Another gov agency gone wild.
that’s been the prevailing view here for years now, so yeah.
According to the left, children don’t belong to the parents anyway.
They left the former Soviet Union, only to come to Soviet Amerika.
WOW.... Amazing.... Heads need to roll on this one. Time to go after the Sutter Memorial Dr’s license and malpractice insurance..... And CPS and the police....
I’m not above thinking that this is in retaliation for Russia’s suspending adoptions by Americans.
***“I was pushed against the building, smacked down,” Alex said. “I said, ‘Am I being placed under arrest?’ He smacked me to the ground and yelled out ‘I think I got the keys to the house!’”***
Anna and Alex, I strongly suggest you find the most rabid, pro American lawyer and let legal nature take its course.
Once again, some cops and CPS morons need to be fired, then sued all to hell....
....but once again, not a damned thing will happen to any of them.
I bet they would have tried to home-school their child, too. We can’t have that.
So, CNN and MSNBC are all over this story, right?
if you try to take my kids, you’d better bring SWAT.
Would have been nice to see certain other gov’t agencies get this aggressive with TWO OTHER RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTS who have , uh, been in the news lately, instead o* these two parents.
It’s never long b4 we see examples like this: the real criminals slip through their *ingers, so they redouble and misdirect their e**orts, and persecute and prosecute the innocent on the *limsiest o* pretexts. And on top o* it, operate like a swat team about to raid a house loaded with explosives.
Would have been nice to see certain other gov’t agencies get this aggressive with TWO OTHER RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTS who have , uh, been in the news lately, instead o* these two parents.
It’s never long b4 we see examples like this: the real criminals slip through their *ingers, so they redouble and misdirect their e**orts, and persecute and prosecute the innocent on the *limsiest o* pretexts. And on top o* it, operate like a swat team about to raid a house loaded with explosives.
No heads will roll. Health care workers have immunity for these reports, and can only be prosecuted if they DON’T make a report. the CPS can never be punished for anything. They are like the gestapo.
But “it’s for the children”, so too many people think we have to take away the rights of kids for their own good.
Some people mistakenly treat this as just a “parental rights” thing. But this child could well be traumatized by being kidnapped from his parents. He’ll be put in some home, watched by people who specifically volunteer (or they get paid) to watch these kids, who are already assumed to be abused. It seems like a perfect place for people who want to abuse kids — you get kids delivered to you for short periods of time, and since they are already assume to be abused, any reports they make will be used against their parents.
These parents will probably agree to a lifetime of anal probes by the CPS in exchange for being allowed to keep their child.
I suspect just to survive, each individual had to push for any advantage, and Americans that do not understand this with compassion can be extremely put off by that crude aggressiveness.
I also know they are the sweetest and most warmhearted people in personal situations and I am proud they are now American citizens.
So sad but true! Most I've seen do it just to collect a check instead of working a real job.
“No heads will roll. Health care workers have immunity for these reports, and can only be prosecuted if they DON’T make a report. the CPS can never be punished for anything. They are like the gestapo.”
We’ll see about that
1. First remedy: go public, and I mean major.
2. Second, law/Revised Code, that REQUIRES every CPS to under go the exact type of random inspections (full case, full extended case, examinations, ANNUALLY UNNANOUNCED AT RANDOM,...interviews, law enforcement) at their own on their own premises. Under video, public video on the internet and elsewhere.
3. If #2 not enacted, then annonymous “tips” the same type they receive, on their own premises. UNNANOUNCED
4. Video of every one of these actions. Revised Code action as above.
5. Mandatory IMMEDIATE disclosure to an officer of the court/ free of charge of all records, documents, and memos, etc., of all parties involved.
And that’s just for starters.
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