Saving Lennox From Medical Kidnapping
I am Christina Meeker's sister, Tiffany Hayman, and I'm setting up this fundraiser to help her get back on her feet after a horrendous and unbelievable event that not many people even know occurred. If you're like me and the rest of our family, you've probably never heard of medical kidnapping. Unfortunately, we have had to learn how prevalent this issue is firsthand.
The more than 2-year ordeal of what happened to her son Lennox is too long and detailed to fully describe in this introductory post, but the bulk of it started in 2021 when Lennox was 7 weeks old. After he was discharged from the NICU at only 4 lbs., Chris and her partner Antiquine continually expressed concerns about Lennox's fussiness at all of their follow-up appointments, only to be brushed off by the doctors. It was later discovered in the doctor's notes "Nervous first time mother, exaggerating." When Lennox's leg randomly became swollen, the pediatrician agreed to see him and then at Christina's insistence, he consented to writing orders for them to bring Lennox to the hospital for x-rays. It was there, at WakeMed Hospital, that the nightmare began.
Lennox's Injuries
Chris and Ant were shocked when the first x-ray showed a fracture in Lennox's femur, since he had never had any known injury. Even with suspicion starting to turn toward them, the parents were the ones who pushed for more x-rays to be done believing there had to be something wrong and were even more floored when they were informed that supposedly Lennox's entire body had fractures throughout it. This led to intense questioning for hours from CPS workers, then police officers, until the parents were told to leave their newborn baby in the hospital or else they would be arrested. For three days they were kept from their child and had to call repeatedly to even get any medical information about Lennox at all. Eventually, Lennox was put into our mother's custody and his parents could only be with him if they were 100% supervised by her.
CPS and Civil Court Case
What followed from that excruciating moment of forced separation was more than 2 years of legal proceedings charging them in both civil and criminal court for child abuse, time in jail for both parents with a total bond amount of 1 million dollars (which is higher than many murder cases), court dates constantly being changed, frequent turnover of highly incompetent and dishonest CPS workers, but none of that compared to the fact that Chris and Ant were kept from their child. The custody arrangements were always being changed, and there were many months where they were allowed zero contact with their baby. They were granted the "rare privilege" of face timing with him during these times (They even had to watch his first steps over the computer.) There were other times when they were only allowed to see Lennox one hour per week in a government building with a CPS worker in the room watching them. The state prosecutor in the civil case sent Lennox with Chris and my mom to a supposed specialist at Duke Hospital to examine the medical evidence and create a report on her findings for the court. She testified on the stand that she could find nothing wrong with Lennox (she tested for ONE genetic disorder only); therefore, she determined he had to have been abused.
Becoming part of the Fractured Families Facebook group, a sadly too-large community of hundreds of people who have been through or are currently facing the same accusations, was the most amazing resource! Through this network, I helped my sister find 2 doctors from other states who were experienced in diagnosing children with the same symptoms as Lennox, and they testified on her behalf during the trial. We then had to wait a month to hear the verdict, during which Lennox had his first birthday, as seen in the picture above. Chris and Ant were only granted a couple hours to have his party with a CPS worker present and then had to return him to our mom's custody and go home without him. It was not the joyous celebration that it should have been for first time parents.
Criminal Court Case
The next day the Judge in the civil case gave his verdict: the case was dismissed and after months and months of having to listen to the lies, medical incompetence and being treated like child abusers, the Judge spent 20 minutes reaming the state's doctors, CPS workers, and prosecutor for their shameless behavior and complete failure to accurately review the clear medical evidence for their "own financial gain." It was only a win for those few minutes though - you would assume winning that case would mean the criminal charges would be dropped right? But no, that is not how our "justice system" works. The criminal case is considered totally separate. Instead, Lennox was actually removed from his parents with NO CONTACT for 84 days. More waiting, delayed court dates, doing the legwork for the lawyers who were being paid huge amounts of money until finally, getting a report from one local doctor from Duke who (very hesitantly) was willing to speak up and tell the truth against her colleague's false claims of abuse: she confirmed the testimony of Chris' expert doctors - Lennox did indeed have infantile rickets which caused him to get fractures from just normal handling. And as our amazing expert doctors pointed out, most of the supposed multiple fractures were not fractures at all (the medical explanation for what they actually were is way beyond the scope of this already long saga though). It was also highly likely that he received his injury in the hospital at birth or in the pediatrician's office when one doctor aggressively bicycled Lennox's legs to relieve gas. But rather than admit the possibility of their own malpractice, it was better to go along with the initial accusations of child abuse.
How Lennox is Doing Now
Lennox had to wear a harness to allow his femur fracture to heal which was obviously uncomfortable for him and made diapering, dressing, etc. a challenge. As he has started walking, he has progressed from bow-legged, to pigeon-toed, and now to mostly straight but he will need to be assessed by an orthopedist periodically to confirm everything is developing as it should. Otherwise, as most babies with infantile rickets do, he has grown strong and healthy and is one of the happiest children you could ever meet! His mom and dad adore him and don't take a moment with him for granted.
Dealing with the Aftermath
Even with the family support that many other victims don't have, my sister's finances were affected in a devastating way that has been difficult to recover from. She had to pay for expert witnesses for her defense, transcripts, medical files, and making binders to use in court. She missed countless days of work to be in court, confer with attorneys, research ways to fight the case, and scour medical data in order to get to the bottom of what she knew had to be a medical diagnosis for her son. All of this meant loss of wages, getting behind on all of her bills, and eventually her boss fired her from her job to prevent her from getting FMLA, unemployment, and health insurance for her and her son. This also ended her being able to continue therapy for the PTSD that resulted from her hellish ordeal. Chris barely slept or ate throughout all of this, staying up all night going over his medical records and essentially building her own case. She had a car accident in the midst of it and had to spend money to get a new car only to get so far behind on payments that it was repossessed. She had to pay several thousand dollars to get it back. Her house went into foreclosure at one point but thankfully she was able to save it. Even after both cases were dismissed, it took several more months and additional court fees, lawyers, etc. to clear her name from the registered abusers list and to get her record expunged. For the majority of this time, she did this as a single parent with her income alone because she refused to give up at any cost.
Chris was able to do some consulting work during this past year and was trying to catch up on all the payments, but her most recent client had to end their contract unexpectedly. She is once again finding herself out of work in a difficult job market and unable to catch up on the debts incurred from the litigations. Even now after everyone who falsely accused her of abuse was proven to be wrong, they do not have to make any amends or pay any reparations for the financial, emotional, psychological and even physical damage they have done to Christina, Antiquine, Lennox, and on a smaller scale, the rest of our family (the extreme stress of it all has aged Chris immensely and caused her to neglect her health). I know that Chris finally feels ready to start sharing her story in order to raise awareness of the sad reality of medical kidnapping and hopefully help others who are going through it now.
How You Can Help
During the years that the actual case was going on, Chris tried to keep the case private and never felt she could share her story publicly and reach out for any kind of help in fear of retaliation from the court and caseworkers. I believe there are many people who would have wanted to help if they had only known what was happening at the time. If that's you and you feel led, I know that she would be beyond grateful for any donation small or large to help her get out of these debts and keep from losing her house or her car while she continues to search for a job. She fought like hell for her son and I would love to see her get some support from her village in order to finally start to heal and move past this trauma.
I also hope to educate people through this post because I know I would not have believed something like this was possible had I not loved through it with her. You can help us raise awareness of this quiet epidemic and share these stories.
- Visit Parents Behind the Pinwheels Facebook page to read the countless stories with the same general pattern.
- Watch Take Care of Maya documentary on Netflix to see a similar story with a devastating ending, and yet they have fought for justice tirelessly.
- Eventually Chris would like to share this entire story in complete detail on a blog as a part of her healing process and to serve as a resource for others who face the same accusations and need to know how to fight the system. So many others did this for us and we want to pay it forward. We would also like to share more concrete ways to help change specific laws and and issues within the medical community that can help prevent medical kidnapping from being so prevalent.
No matter what, thank you SO MUCH if you have taken the time to read this entire post and being willing to hear Chris' story. We are so grateful!
