On June 30, 2008, Lakewood resident David O’Shell murdered his wife Tiffany and then committed suicide. A desperate act, it was motivated by a desperate chain of events. On June 16, Tiffany dropped her three-month-old daughter Alyssa off at her mother’s house before work. Jackie noticed that Alyssa cried whenever her right leg was moved. When Dave came home, Jackie dropped off Alyssa and told him. He observed Alyssa carefully, fed her, and put her to sleep. The next morning the leg was swollen. Tiffany took her daughter to the pediatrician, who x-rayed the leg. The office told Tiffany to take Alyssa to The Children’s Hospital for more tests. Dave joined them at the hospital.
The hospital discovered 11 broken bones in Alyssa’s legs. Adams County child protection workers were notified, launched an investigation and placed the infant with a foster mother. The welfare workers suspected that Ashley’s father, and possibly others in the family, inflicted the damage. There were no bruises or other signs of abuse. Despite the family’s protestations and pleas to find a medical explanation for the broken bones, child welfare workers, as well as The Children’s Hospital, believed the evidence pointed a strong finger at Dave O’Shell.
In a heartbreaking Denver Post article, journalist David Olinger wrote, “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 . . . Police were about to arrest him, he thought, for felony child abuse. He had grown more despondent day by day.”
The same day of the murder-suicide, a doctor at The Children’s Hospital detected an illness in Alyssa unnoticed by the hospital. She ordered genetic testing. A week later, test results showed Alyssa had spinal muscular atrophy, a debilitating genetic disorder lethal to newborns. Tiffany’s parents Jackie and Paul Cuin were granted custody of Alyssa for three months after the O’Shells’ murder-suicide until Alyssa’s death from spinal muscular atrophy on Oct. 28, 2008.
Abuse vs. disease. A child welfare agency acting in the interests of the child vs. not acting and finding that child starved or beaten to death a week later. Uncovering proof clearing the parents of culpability on the same day as their murder-suicide. It reads like a Shakespearean tragedy.
The national and local media have covered numerous instances where child welfare authorities kept the children in the home, only to confront tragic results.
As the Post outlined, “In Colorado, the list of children who died despite calls to child protection agencies keeps growing. Chandler Grafner starved to death . . . after a worried teacher’s aide called a child protection agency to save him. Caleb Pacheco’s body was found under a Sterling mobile home after, an aunt said, she called authorities 70 times about the missing boy. Gabriel Trujillo, emaciated and covered with bruises and cigarette burns, died of a head injury weeks after an aunt told Adams County investigators” that he was being abused.
In cases involving suspected abuse, doctors, nurses and social workers adhere to a stringent checklist outlining possible abuse: repeated visits to the ER, unexplained or dubious explanations of injuries, etc. If the situation warrants further investigation, social welfare agencies intervene.
It’s a slippery, paradoxical slope. The goal is protecting children and women from further abuse — a well intentioned but double-edged sword, Alyssa’s grandfather told the Post. “While all eyes are now focused on cases in which social service agencies failed to save children in danger, there are others ‘where the departments became overzealous,’ Paul Cuin said.
By law, child protection agencies can’t divulge details of their cases. Children’s Hospital spokesperson Elizabeth Whitehead told the Post that the hospital “cannot comment on individual child-abuse cases, past or present.” Why?
Darwin Cox, the child and family services director in Adams County, also said he could not discuss details. However, he did tell the Post that Alyssa “was referred from a hospital renowned for its child-abuse expertise.” The Post reviewed hospital records indicating that its specialists believed that Alyssa had been horribly abused and that the family was in denial. “This was a terrible, terrible tragedy,” said Adams County director Cox. “We did the job we could with the best information we had at the time.”
However, other experts involved in the case said there might be a medical cause for Alyssa’s broken bones. On June 19, two days after Alyssa was removed from her parents home, an Adams County judge agreed that “other possible causes had to be explored.” Alyssa’s pediatrician told Tiffany and Dave that she wanted a bone specialist to examine Alyssa for “weak bones.” Still others worried something was physically wrong with Alyssa.
The Cuins sued for an admission that the child protection team played a role in the deaths of their daughter and son-in-law. They lost the suit before it ever reached a jury. Children’s Hospital successfully argued that a murder-suicide was not a foreseeable consequence of the investigation. Adams County social services argued that government agencies are immune from prosecution unless their behavior is “willfully and wantonly” wrong. Presidents are not immune. The average taxpayer is not immune. Neither are government agencies, nor should they be allowed to hide behind a cloak of anonymity.
It would take a Solomon to come up with a tenable solution to this ill-timed chain of events. While we may sympathize with Dave O’Shell’s state of mind, we can’t forgive him for killing his wife. Thou shalt not kill, no matter how black the night of our despair. We grieve little Alyssa’s death. As for the living, we can only hope that they learn to traverse the narrow bridge between saving innocent young lives and protecting the parents who love them. We are not Solomon. We are human beings who make profound mistakes. Still, we must look at all possibilities before leaping to an irreversible conclusion. As the Latin phrase implores us, “May justice be done, or let the heavens fall.”
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
