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Who knows what's best for baby? The latest installment in an occasional series

Sunday, December 08, 2002

By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Anthony Bruno was born suddenly, but safely, early on Aug. 5 in a West End home where his parents cuddled him and cared for him for three days then took him to a pediatrician who deemed him fit and fine.

The day after Anthony's birth, someone called Allegheny County's Office of Children, Youth and Families claiming that two addicts had delivered a baby in their home and had failed to take the drug-exposed infant to a hospital for fear of being found out.

	Valerie Shook, right, calls from her home last month to find out when her son would be returned. With her are Tony Bruno and his daughters. (Joyce Mendelsohn, Post-Gazette)

That set in motion the removal of a healthy baby from his parents, the administering of methadone to an infant who was not experiencing withdrawal and an 81-day separation of parents and newborn.

As Anthony's mother, Valerie Shook, fought to get him back, she said in frustration and outrage: "I cannot believe how god-awful powerful these people are. I cannot believe they can do this kind of thing to people."

They can because lawmakers, in an attempt to shield helpless children from abusive and negligent parents, vested child welfare agencies such as CYF and juvenile courts with authority to seize children now and ask questions later.

As scary as that might sound to parents, Marc Cherna, director of the county's department of human services, says the power is essential. "Infants die easily," he explained, "so, if anything, we must err on the side of safety. I want to keep families together, but you have to be careful."

Allegheny County's caseworkers don't routinely abuse the power. Often when the agency takes a child under circumstances that initially seem suspect, the worker's hunch, in the end, proves correct.

In one case last summer, for example, CYF took a newborn who tested positive for methadone from a woman who'd avoided drugs for nearly a year by legally using that drug to counter her addiction and byfaithfully attending counseling.

The caseworker told a judge the child's removal was justified because the mother's history indicated she'd quickly relapse.

She did.

Sometimes, though, caseworkers are wrong.

Then families are split and traumatized for no good reason until a judge overrules the agency and returns the children.

"I think there is a need for CYF," Shook said, "But they need to do things a lot differently from the way they do. They need to be more careful before they take a child away."

A note on the door

When Anthony's parents got back from the pediatrician Aug. 8, they found a note on their door saying CYF wanted to talk to them. It scared Shook. CYF had taken her daughter Katie during a decade in which Shook used heroin.

Now 35, Shook was five years clean and Katie visited every other weekend. But Shook knew what CYF could do.

Anthony's father, Tony Bruno, had concerns of his own. He'd spent much of his 49 years hooked on prescription drugs. He'd been clean for the past 15 years and had worked as an addiction counselor, but he wondered what CYF had been told.

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	Juvenile Court Journal Barbara White Stack asked the judges of the Allegheny County's juvenile court to use their legal discretion to open access to the court's proceedings, long closed to the public in conformance with confidentiality rules. The judges agreed that a broader understanding of the court and the family circumstances it administers would benefit the public. In her occasional series, Juvenile Court Journal, White Stack is using the access granted by the judges to shed light on the people and issues at the heart of this once-secret system. Click here to previous installments

Bruno called CYF. A caseworker told him the agency wanted the couple to submit to drug assessments and hand over the baby for evaluation at a hospital.

Bruno refused, but he did sign a release so the pediatrician could discuss the baby's health with CYF. "I wasn't interested in doing anything with anyone right then. I hadn't done anything wrong. I just had a baby and I wanted to enjoy him," he said later.

Despite the release, CYF obtained an emergency custody order to seize the child anyway. It used a procedure that allows Allegheny County caseworkers to submit allegations, none of which ever have to be substantiated, to juvenile probation officers, who never deny CYF permission to take a child.

In the case of baby Anthony, the caseworker wrote that seizing the infant was justified because CYF had been unable to verify that a doctor had checked him, that Shook was using both heroin and crack, that Shook suffered from hepatitis and that Shook and Bruno had refused to meet with CYF to prove the child was safe.

Order in hand, caseworker Coleen Olsson went to Shook's house Aug. 13 and took the baby from his mother's arms. He was 8 days old.

Shook and Bruno were unnerved. She was shaking and crying. He was talking rapidly. They were slightly unkempt when they arrived at juvenile court the next day for the shelter hearing.

There, caseworkers are supposed to prove that taking a child from his parents was imperative because he was sick or injured or in imminent danger. But that's done more easily than might be expected because hearsay evidence -- the kind forbidden in most court hearings -- is permitted.

In a shelter hearing before Judge Bob Colville Jr. on Sept. 18, for example, CYF told the judge a newborn should remain in foster care because the mother had not proved to CYF that she was no longer using drugs. Though the mother asserted she'd been clean for a year, the caseworker testified that a source CYF refused to name had reported the "mother craved beer during her pregnancy" and "she may have drunk beer."

In that case, like Anthony's, the parents find themselves trying to demonstrate they deserve their own child.

"They have to prove they are innocent. CYF doesn't have to prove the parents are guilty," says Timothy Uhrich, the first attorney hired by Bruno and Shook.

Worrisome evidence

At the shelter hearing for baby Anthony, Olsson told Judge Colville that Bruno and Shook were uncooperative and that she believed both were using drugs.

"The father's vocabulary choice and manner of speech appeared to me to show he was intoxicated," she said, "He had slurred speech. He had some irrational thoughts. It was difficult to understand things he said. The mother's behavior seemed prone to emotion. It was very difficult to communicate with her as she does not listen to what you are saying."

Another worker testified that when she went to the home, she saw what she believed to be a marijuana cigarette outside on the sidewalk.

CYF didn't have to produce the cigarette, prove it was marijuana or show that Bruno or Shook put it there. CYF didn't have to produce drug tests to show either parent was high.

Instead, Bruno and Shook had to try to demonstrate that they had been clean for years and that CYF wouldn't cooperate with them, refusing two offers to meet. Testimony did show that the pediatrician told CYF the baby was fine -- on Aug. 13, the day CYF took him from his parents.

Uhrich told Colville that CYF had presented nothing to establish need to separate Anthony from his parents.

But the allegations of drug abuse made this a tough call for the judge. Colville decided Anthony should remain in foster care, but his parents would get liberal visits until the dependency hearing, which is usually held 30 days later. That hearing is a more formal proceeding, at which hearsay evidence is prohibited.

Colville said he would give the parents a chance to prove CYF's allegations were untrue.

Their first opportunity was immediately after the hearing. They both took drug tests and both were negative.

The next day Anthony got sick. The foster mother took the quivering and feverish boy to Children's Hospital and told doctors the baby's mother was an intravenous drug abuser.

Doctors decided Anthony could be suffering either from drug withdrawal or a urinary tract infection and wanted to give him methadone and antibiotics. But they needed Shook's and Bruno's permission, and both strongly opposed giving their newborn methadone unnecessarily. The child's drug test results would not be available until the following day, however, and doctors wanted to initiate treatment immediately.

"They threatened us," Shook recounted later, "They said if we didn't sign the consent, they would get a court order and say we were uncooperative and they were going to put the baby on methadone anyway." So they signed.

The next day, the blood test showed no drugs in Anthony's system. He had a common urinary tract infection. But the methadone had to continue until Anthony could be weaned off.

Uhrich was outraged. He asked Colville for another shelter hearing in an attempt to get the child immediately returned to his parents.

"What is the clear necessity for removal?" the judge asked CYF at the Sept. 11 hearing.

Olsson repeated her complaint that the parents weren't cooperative, refusing CYF demands for information. And CYF tried to show Shook's and Bruno's home was unsuitable.

"Is the child healthy?" the judge asked.

	Three-month-old Tony Bruno back in his mother's arms after CYF was forced to return him. At left is father Tony Bruno. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

"He was given methadone for symptoms of withdrawal," Olsson said.

Colville decided to keep the child in foster care until a shelter review hearing scheduled for the following week. But he said visits were to occur daily, and he warned CYF, "We do not have, frankly, a very good record established showing clear necessity" for removing the baby.

He ordered drug screens of both parents immediately after the hearing. Both left without submitting and then, a week later, neither showed up for the hearing.

They were angry over the judge's decision and unhappy that Uhrich hadn't gotten their baby back. They decided to start over with a new lawyer, but that caused a long delay.

The new attorney, Kelly Blauzdis, was faced not only with proving their case but also with overcoming what the court now perceived as the parents' recalcitrance. She got a postponement so she could prepare but that meant a court date of Nov. 1, 80 days after the baby was taken away.

By the time of this hearing, CYF knew numerous drug tests showed the parents and baby clean. So it changed strategies. It suggested Shook and Bruno injured Anthony by failing to get immediate medical care for him after his birth. But CYF's own witnesses, the pediatrician and the doctor at Children's Hospital who treated the baby for the urinary infection, didn't support it. And Colville didn't buy it.

CYF then attacked the parents as balky in dealings with the agency and rude to the foster parents.

At this proceeding, the dependency hearing, CYF must prove by clear convincing evidence that parents have been unable or would be unable to properly care for their children. Being uncooperative with CYF doesn't meet that standard.

Colville ordered baby Anthony returned to Bruno and Shook by noon the next day.

He stipulated, however, that the couple submit to random drug screens and permit a counselor to visit their home routinely. "An infant came into this world in unique circumstances," he said. "I want to make sure the baby is safe."

Bruno and Shook were relieved and thrilled.

The next morning though, they'd heard nothing by 10:30 and began calling everyone involved. At 1:30 p.m., Family Services, a nonprofit agency that had supervised their visits with Anthony, said that they couldn't deliver the baby without CYF authorization.

An hour later, they called back to say they'd gotten permission.

Anthony finally was reunited with his parents at 6 p.m.

Bruno and Shook found out last week, however, that the ordeal isn't over: They got a letter demanding that they pay the cost of Anthony's 81 days in foster care.