The woman at the centre of the Fractured podcast investigation into a wrongful conviction for child abuse has won a reprieve from deportation on the orders of an immigration minister. Fractured season two is available from February 26. Photo: Newsroom
Shaken baby diagnosis has moved internationally from certainty to uncertainty - and raises questions where innocent parents have been marked as abusers.
Child abuse has been described as New Zealand's dirty little secret, but a supposed shaken baby case - that has seen a mother jailed - has raised the question of authorities being too quick to diagnose and report alleged violence.
This country has one of the highest rates of child abuse among developed nations, with thousands of cases reported annually.
But a new podcast by Newsroom's award-winning journalists Melanie Reid and Bonnie Sumner looks at a case where the evidence just does not stack up.
"In the rush not to miss child abuse, it is being over diagnosed and primarily in this country, at Starship Hospital," Reid tells The Detail.
International evidence now is pointing to potentially innocent or medical reasons for some cases where authorities have been quick to judge parents.
Reid, along with investigative journalist and producer Sumner, are behind the Newsroom Fractured podcast which looks into a complex case involving a medical diagnosis, and its fallout on a young Indian family living in New Zealand.
"An Indian mother moved to New Zealand and took her lovely wee eight-week-old baby daughter to Starship because she wasn't well," says Reid. "But she ended up being charged with abusing her daughter, and she went through the courts, and then went to jail for two and a half years.
"We have spent more than a year proving the medical evidence on which her conviction is based, is flawed."
A CT scan of the baby's head revealed what doctors diagnosed as a non-depressed linear fracture on the left side of her skull, and subdural haemorrhages (bleeding into the space between the skull and the brain) and possible injury to the brain.
"Since the advent of shaken baby syndrome, as a hypothesis, when doctors see this - this triad - they always say this is the definitive diagnosis of child abuse," Sumner told The Detail.
"But there are doctors overseas now who are saying 'this is not true... it's just a hypothesis and it's actually an assumption and there isn't scientific validity to it'."
The baby also had multiple fractures, including 38 rib fractures. There was no outward bruising or marks.
Sumner and Reid say international experts told them these injuries can be caused by birth trauma, bleeding disorders, vitamin deficiencies, brittle bones, collagen disorders, among others.
"The experts say the baby had extremely low levels of vitamin D... she could have a brittle bone condition... and her skull fracture could be a congenital condition, something she was born with," says Sumner.
Reid added, it could also be the result of a horrific birth.
"You have got the experts saying 'no, no' [to shaken baby syndrome]," she says. "We haven't just got one professional opinion... we have got four, five worthy opinions from such esteemed professors, so we have compiled these, and we have taken the case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission."
The Detail put the allegations to Starship Hospital, and in a statement, Te Whatu Ora Group Director of Operations of Auckland City Hospital, Mike Shepherd said:
"We are unable to comment on specifics of this individual case for a range of reasons.
"As always, we encourage patients and whānau to reach out to us directly if they have concerns about their or their loved one's care.
"Alternatively, people are welcome to contact the Health and Disability Commission for an independent review.
"We are confident of the expertise of our Starship Child Protection team and the work they do in conjunction with New Zealand Police and other relevant agencies."
Reid and Sumner want a systemic review of all cases of baby shaken syndrome.
"This is the point of the story - this issue, over diagnosing of shaken baby syndrome has been bubbling away overseas... it's become a global fiasco," says Reid.
"The science has moved away from certainty towards uncertainty. This is a big issue. We are using one case to illustrate this. But there is case after case after case.
"It comes back to, in the rush not to miss child abuse, it's being over diagnosed."
Reid says the family at the centre of their Fractured podcast is broken. The mother has always maintained she did not, and would not ever, hurt her daughter, who has been in and out of foster care.
"They are broken in every way," Reid says. "They are heartbroken, they are financially broken, their relationship is broken, everything is broken."
In a remarkable last-minute twist and ray of hope for the family, the immigration minister has just cancelled the mother's deportation order, while her case is under review, allowing her to stay in the same country as her daughter.
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