We ask that you respectfully email the Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp and his Chief of Staff, Lauren Curry to demand action on this appalling situation. Mobile users can click on the email link for a pre-filled template, just fill in your details. 

• Brian Kemp, Governor of Georgia –Brian.Kemp@Georgia.gov 
• Lauren Curry, Chief of Staff – Lauren.Curry@Georgia.gov

   

Governor Brian Kemp,

As a citizen of ________ (enter your state here), I am calling on you to meet with Spike Cohen and You Are The Power, as well as the families that your Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) is tearing apart!

I am concerned about how Commissioner Candice L. Broce, the director of DFCS, the department responsible for the safety and well-being of our state’s most vulnerable families and children, allows her employees to seize children from factually innocent parents and place them into foster care.   

The catalyst for this wrong is the reliance on the opinions of child abuse pediatricians (CAPs), a relatively new subspecialty officially recognized by the American Board of Pediatrics in 2009. Between 2009 and 2019, the rate of reported abuse by medical professionals has increased by 55%. Although CAPs’ opinions are not legal decisions, DFCS treats them as such. The subjective opinions accepted as fact, often made within just hours of the child coming in for care, have extraordinary influence over the decision of DFCS to seize a child, even without a lawful supporting basis. Often, the evidence of abuse is refutable, and secondary medical opinion by DFCS is not sought until after a child has been seized, causing unnecessary trauma for children and their parents.  

DFCS partners with CAPs at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA), where annually, 1,900 suspected victims of abuse and neglect are evaluated by a handful of doctors.

Independent investigative measures were undertaken by You Are The Power (YATP), a membership-based nonprofit whose network encompasses all 50 states, and found that a mistaken or overstated diagnosis of abuse by a CAP failed to present a factual basis for their findings and instead offered their opinion which resulted in the fracturing of numerous factually innocent Georgia families. CAPs did not identify themselves as such or notify parents that they were being investigated for potential child abuse. Unaware that a CAP was questioning them, parents offered ideas about the cause of their child’s injury, and the CAP saw this as a shift in the account of why they brought their child to the hospital. Moreover, the diagnosis of abuse was not supported by the totality of evidence: all medical records, the testimony of immediate family, or testimony from independent physicians or pediatricians who treated and cared for these children.  

YATP is currently supporting three Georgia families while vetting several more cases throughout Georgia, where DFCS, under the leadership of Commissioner Broce, relied on the sole opinion of a CAP and seized children from factually innocent parents. The fractured families are Matt and Tuckey Hernandez from Forsyth County, Brady and Carrie Timms from Gordon County, and Corey and Diana Sullivan from Camden County. These loving parents brought their medically fragile children to the hospital, seeking answers, and instead were falsely accused by a CAP of abuse. DFCS failed to investigate the claim properly, and the result of their negligence is a nightmare no parent should have to endure. They have had their children seized, were arrested for crimes that never occurred, and faced decades in prison. This could have been avoided if DFCS had done their lawful due diligence and adequately investigated the cases. Instead, DFCS has fractured these families, harming the very children they were supposed to protect. 

The national average for family reunification once a child protective agency has seized a child is 47%. Georgia has one of the nation’s lowest at 30%.

An alarming 4% of the 11,000 plus children in DFCS custody are reported as receiving “maltreatment in care.” Almost 5% of the children in DFCS custody are subjected to a “reoccurrence of maltreatment,” the majority are children of color. Statistically, doctors over-diagnose abuse in children they perceive as being lower-income or nonwhite.

Would you allow your family to board a plane with a 4% to 5% chance of crashing?

During Child and Family Services Reviews, case managers are regularly cited for not properly assessing all home members, updating assessments at critical junctions of the case, monitoring safety plans, conducting drug screenings where needed, and providing the proper supporting case documentation.

CAPs work directly with DFCS lawyers in cases where the state is seizing children, and their opinions help shape false narratives against innocent parents. This is questionable practice because cases where DFCS wants a child seized are heard in juvenile court, where the burden of proof is low, and parents have limited legal rights. Juvenile court judges, who side with DFCS recommendations upwards of 70% of the time in Georgia, allow CAPs to go well beyond their medical expertise and offer speculative testimony about their diagnoses in ways that attack and erode the cardinal rule of our criminal legal system: all are innocent until proven guilty.

The de facto position by DFCS against innocent parents is often adversarial, punitive, and antagonistic because case managers, juvenile court judges, law enforcement officials, and prosecutors accept a CAP’s opinion without question and fail to do their lawful due diligence and adequately investigate the allegations of abuse. The result is an imbalance of power that heavily favors the state and destroys the lives of innocent families.

One child and their factually innocent parents harmed by DFCS and its partnership with CAPs at CHOA is appalling. Still, dozens more represent processes that permit DFCS and CAPs to wield unilateral power in labeling abuse—even though none occurred—in dire need of reform and appropriate oversight.

We ask that you, Governor Kemp, meet with Spike Cohen, the President and Founder of You Are The Power, along with members of his Georgia leadership team and the families that DFCS has fractured, to engage in respectful, meaningful dialogue and discuss ways to move forward, heal, and prevent this nightmare from happening again.

These are Georgians. Not just numbers and statistics; they are human beings and deserve your respect.

Please meet with You Are The Power and these families to talk about their cases, the problems with your system, and fixes that can be made to put an end to this travesty.

Thank you for doing the right thing in this matter.

Respectfully submitted,

YOUR NAME

Email Keith Higgins, Camden County District Attorney –khiggins@pacga.org

Mobile users can tap on the email address listed above for a pre-formatted email template, simply add your name to the end. 

Dear District Attorney Higgins,

I am writing regarding your office’s prosecution of Corey and Diana Sullivan.

Since they brought their twin daughter to Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, FL, their lives have been upended by a series of missteps by doctors and law enforcement.
Rather than doing their due diligence, those responsible for diagnosing, evaluating, treating, and adequately investigating allegations of child abuse have failed the Sullivans, subjecting their children to unnecessary trauma.

Even before Camden County Juvenile Judge O. Brent Green ordered the reunification of the Sullivan family after a misdiagnosis of abuse by Dr. Barbara Knox, a child abuse pediatrician with a troubled past, your office presented Corey’s case to a grand jury for indictment. Just last month, another complaint was filed against Dr. Knox, alleging that she once again bullied staff into saying abuse occurred when the opposite was true. Dr. Knox was also accused of engaging in racist, bigoted behavior.

Moreover, fifteen months after Corey’s arrest, Diana was arrested by the GBI and charged with the same felony offenses. The GBI completed no additional investigative work. The only evidence uncovered during that time exonerates Corey and Diana. If she presented such a danger to her children, why did the GBI wait 15 months to arrest her?

Both DFCS and the GBI relied on Dr. Knox’s misdiagnosis of abuse as the basis for its actions against Corey and Diana Sullivan.

It is conservatively estimated that over 2,200 innocent men and women are currently incarcerated in Georgia’s prison system. It appears that your office seeks to add to those numbers through action and deed.

Given the profound implications of this matter, please dismiss the charges against Corey and Diana Sullivan promptly; they are factually innocent.

Respectfully submitted,

YOUR NAME

Give directly to the Sullivan family via GoFundMe by following the link below.

Donate to the Sullivan Family

Corey and Diana struggled with infertility issues for fourteen years, spending most of their life’s savings on IVF procedures before getting pregnant with Arabella. When Arabella was two years old, the Sullivans wanted nothing more than to give their daughter a brother or sister. Corey and Diana once again used IVF, intentionally trying for twins. When Diana found out she was pregnant, she and Corey were elated. To their surprise, Diana was successfully pregnant with twins. Not just twins, but fraternal twins; Arabella would have a little brother and sister.

Amelia and Christian had separate placentas, and during pregnancy, Diana experienced severe complications with Amelia. Christian was thriving and growing accordingly; however, Amelia was not. During the third trimester, Diana had pre-eclampsia, and doctors feared Amelia was not getting enough oxygen and nutrients due to restricted blood flow to the placenta. Doctors told Diana that if she delivered naturally, it would likely crush every bone in Ameila’s tiny body.

The twins were delivered by emergency C-section. At the time of her birth, Amelia weighed just 3 pounds (under 1% on the natural growth scale) and spent 42 days in the NICU. Her diagnosed health concerns are Intrauterine Growth Retardation, Anemia, Low Platelets, Limited Bone Mineral Deposition, Delayed Bone Development, Hyperchloremic Acidosis, Generalized Demineralization of the Spine, and Softness of the Bones. These conditions were diagnosed in utero and post-birth.

Recently, Diana was diagnosed with Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome (EDS)—a genetic disorder that explains the complications she experienced with Amelia.

Seven weeks after being discharged from the NICU (and still under 1% on the natural growth scale), Amelia’s right leg began to swell (it was later determined to be a broken femur), and if she did eat, it was immediately thrown up. Unable to keep her formula and life-sustaining vitamins down, Corey and Diana rushed her to Southeast Georgia Health System. There, doctors noticed she had several rib fractures in various stages of healing (these fractures were later determined by an independent doctor to have likely occurred in utero and are possibly the result of Amelia having EDS herself).

The Sullivans were referred to Wolfson’s Children Hospital in Jacksonville, FL.

The catalyst for Corey’s arrest stemmed from the visit to Wolfson’s. Dr. Barbara Knox, a Child Abuse Physician (CAP), diagnosed Amelia as having been abused. Because the Sullivans are Georgia residents, DFCS was notified, and local law enforcement requested the assistance of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

In December 2023, despite conclusive, independent medical opinions and findings to the contrary, Corey was arrested by GBI Special Agent Thomas Kimelblatt and charged with 1st Degree Cruelty to Children and Aggravated Battery against Amelia. Agent Kimelblatt, without conducting a thorough independent investigation, relied solely on the opinion of Dr. Knox when he applied for and received the arrest warrants.

Corey has yet to be indicted by a grand jury.

If these circumstances sound familiar, they should. The Sullivan case is eerily similar to that of Hernandez’s and Timm’s families. The Hernandez and Timms children also have diagnosed medical conditions. Yet, DFCS, with the assistance of a CAP, accused the parents of abuse and requested the termination of their parental rights while local law enforcement sought felony prosecution.

Currently, DFCS, without doing their due diligence or conducting an independent investigation themselves, relies on the opinion of Dr. Knox and wants the termination of the Sullivans’ parental rights.

Dr. Knox, the former head of the Child Protection Program in Madison, Wisconsin, and Alaska Cares, a state-supported clinic operated by Providence Alaska Medical Center, has a questionable background. She has falsely accused parents of child abuse via a “pattern of misdiagnoses,” fostered hostile work environments, and pressured colleagues to find abuse where none existed. Every staff member at Alaska Cares who worked for or with Dr. Knox resigned because of her unprofessional conduct. Alaska Cares investigated Dr. Knox and “determined that some of her child abuse diagnoses failed to meet the standard of care.” Dr. Knox subsequently resigned from both positions under internal investigation.

Despite these documented issues of concern, Dr. Knox was hired by Wolfson’s.

Currently, Arabella is in the care of Diana’s mother, and Christian and Amelia are in the care of Corey’s parents.

The Sullivan family has suffered enough at the hands of an unhindered, broken governmental system. Corey and Diana’s children need to be with their loving parents and Corey free from felony prosecution.