Last year, on Christmas Eve, Jacqueline Morales Boatright gave birth to a daughter, Evelyn. It was a traumatic experience; Jacqueline had an emergency C-section, and Evelyn was born with bruises and swelling. But the baby pulled through, and Jacqueline and her husband Juan took Evelyn back to their Fort Worth, Texas, home.
Unfortunately, the Boatrights returned to the hospital—a different one—six weeks later, after baby Evelyn developed some strange twitches and started to vomit. The worried parents brought her to the emergency room at Cook Children’s Medical Center. Doctors examined Evelyn and took her for testing. Significantly, they noted in her record that she bore no signs of abuse or neglect.
The hospital ordered an MRI and an X-ray. The MRI came back with signs of small brain bleeding, and the X-ray showed an old partial rib fracture that was mostly healed. This led the radiologist to immediately classify Evelyn as a suspected victim of child abuse, even though her injuries were well explained by the circumstances of her birth.