Pain of Baby’s Injury Compounded for Accused Parents

I can easily imagine Ernie Reinhardt’s anger. After all, there he was at midnight on the Fourth of July, having finally convinced an Orange County social services worker and two sheriff’s deputies that neither he nor his wife had caused the fracture in their infant son’s leg. Fears that his son would be taken into protective custody finally had dissipated.

When all was said and done, an orthopedist concluded that a rare bone disease caused the break. But because an X-ray revealed the fracture and hospital policy required that social services be notified, Reinhardt and his wife felt like suspects.

They were. Although no other signs of abuse were visible, the Reinhardts were asked to explain what they couldn’t: How does a 4-month-old baby break a bone in his leg? He was given additional X-rays without their permission and subjected to other tests.

Reinhardt, a Dana Point resident, has quit fuming. But he hasn’t forgiven or forgotten. He wonders if he and his wife’s names are really cleared. “God forbid if one of our other boys decides someday to see how hot the stove really is,” he said.

“It irritates me a lot,” Reinhardt said Thursday from his office where he sells new homes. Of the several-hour ordeal at the hospital, he said: “When it was over, the social worker said, ‘My job is done, the case is closed. You won’t be hearing from me unless anything else comes up.’ No apology, no, ‘Sorry to put you through what we put you through.’ At that point, we were just thankful they weren’t taking our child.”

I heard about the case from Reinhardt’s father, who is more outraged than his son. William Reinhardt considers the county’s actions everything from Hitlerian to Orwellian. “This whole thing was a horror story, like something that would have happened in Germany or Russia,” the elder Reinhardt said. “This is so contrary to the American myth of innocent until proven guilty.”

Coincidentally, the same week I heard about the Reinhardt case another Orange County couple, both 50ish and who insist on anonymity, wrote about the Social Services Agency taking their three grandchildren into protective custody. An anonymous call to a county hotline tipped off social workers, who visited the youngsters at their preschool and took them away.

The couple have taken care of the three children, ages, 6, 5 and 3 1/2, for about three years, after their mother abandoned them. The grandmother, to whom I spoke Thursday, insists she couldn’t possibly have caused the bruise on the 5-year-old’s buttocks and that he injured himself from repeated falls from his new skateboard.

The children have been at the Orangewood Children’s Home since July 10. The thought haunts: What if this couple are unfairly accused and those children shouldn’t be in Orangewood?

That’s why this issue is a teeth-grinder. What happens when our insistence that we protect children clashes with parental rights?

To underscore how vexing this is, Ernie Reinhardt says, “I agree that they have to take the side of a child who doesn’t talk. I understand that for a child who doesn’t walk or crawl, how do they break a leg?”

His complaint was that innocent explanations weren’t fully explored before the authorities were called. Was it logical, he said, that a couple who caused their child’s injury would voluntarily bring him to the hospital for an X-ray? Wouldn’t a call to the family doctor, instead of to social services, have been informative?

And yet, for every innocent Reinhardt family out there, what about the abusive family? Doesn’t common sense tell us that social workers have to circumvent, in some fashion, the parents to get at the truth?

That’s the sticky wicket I handed Irene Briggs, an “emergency response” supervisor in the county’s Children Services unit.

Does the county have too much power in these matters? I asked her.

“No,” Briggs said. “I think the community thinks we do, but I don’t. I hate that word, power, because it sounds like we get some personal gratification out of taking kids into custody. I don’t know anybody who does or anyone who has ever expressed that they did.”

I didn’t ask her specifically about either case I’ve cited, knowing she couldn’t talk about them, anyway. In general, though, no child is taken into protective custody on one person’s judgment alone and unless there is a strong belief that a child is at risk, she said. A mere allegation is not enough. Fewer than 5% of the children interviewed by a social worker are taken into protective custody, she said.

The reality, she said, is that child abuse isn’t going away. In 1996, 1,034 children were taken into protective custody for various forms of abuse, Briggs said. Typically, physical abuse accounts for about 37% of all allegations.

She conceded that many cases aren’t clear-cut, especially with younger children who can’t converse.

“We try every day to be a better system,” she said. “We’re continuously training our social workers, and we work with a lot of professionals in the community [such as doctors, teachers and psychologists]. We do not operate in isolation. When we make a decision that requires us to take a child into protective custody, we’ve talked to as many people as we can.

“I understand the parents’ hostility toward us, because we are invasive,” Briggs said. “But I think a lot are very cooperative and understand why the system is in place and they give us the information we need.”

Somehow, it seems to me, we have to protect children without making the Ernie Reinhardts of the world have to call a lawyer, which he did that night.

I asked him, since everything turned out OK and the story was 2 weeks old, why he was upset. “Because,” he said, “you didn’t have to go through what I went through.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.