"Shaking a baby
shatters lives." That’s the message that Cathy Sanders
has been trying to get across
over the past seven years. She’s raised money through
donations to her organization, Shaken Baby Prevention,
to pay for billboards
and
more recently to pay for large images that cover the
back of public buses in Northern Virginia and in the
Washington DC area.
Cathy Sanders is the mother of Ryan
Sanders—a beautiful, beautiful boy who, at the age of 8
weeks, was shaken by his daycare provider. Ryan was
shaken so violently that he was left permanently
disabled. Ryan is now 14. He cannot talk, dress himself
or brush his teeth alone. He has the cognitive abilities
of a toddler.
Cathy Sanders gave me permission to
post some of the pictures. There are others on her
website.
This is a photo of Ryan taken when he
was much younger.
You
see what I mean about what a beautiful, beautiful boy he
is. But as Cathy told me yesterday, "I'm only 5 foot
two. I hope he stops growing soon because it's really
getting hard for me to lift him."
Infants are particularly at risk if
shaken because their necks are not well developed.
Experts describe shaken baby syndrome as a head injury
in which vigorous shaking causes the brain to slam back
and forth against the skull. The year that Ryan was
shaken, three other infants in the Washington DC area
were also shaken. Ryan survived. The other three did
not.
One expert says that shaken baby
syndrome is often undiagnosed. Craig Futterman,
president of the
Fort Worth-based Shaken Baby Alliance and associate
director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Inova
Fairfax Hospital for Children told the Washingon Post
that at Inova, he has seen hundreds of shaken children
come in, with up to 50 dying.
Ryan’s story is told in an April 26,
2007 article in the Washington Post and also on a
website that his mother has developed in order to raise
awareness of how devastating the effects of shaking a
baby can be. There are tremendous resources on Cathy
Sanders’ website. These photos were taken when Ryan was
8 weeks old.
Only once in my legal career did I
work on a shaken baby case. This was about 17 years ago,
early in my career when I was doing lots of assignments
in various counties representing children or parents in
neglect and abuse cases. I still recall vividly the
facts and circumstances of that case. Every court
appearance on behalf of my client, the mother, was
gut-wrenching. In that case, the father was charged with
attempted murder. He eventually pled guilty to first
degree child abuse and was sentenced to 10 years in
Jackson Prison. My experience was
similar to that described by the Assistant
Commonwealth's Attorney Sandra R. Sylvester. She told
the Post that she’d handled about 30 of these cases in
her career. She described them as emotionally draining and
difficult to prosecute.
Just imagine how emotionally draining
these devastating injuries are for the children who
survive to lead their lives as permanently injured
persons and for their families.
As Cathy Sanders told the Washington
Post: "People need to understand that they can't take
things out on children. People need to understand crying
won't kill a baby, shaking a baby will."
Cathy Sanders says that she knows the
image is jarring. She likes that it is. She told the
Post: "I like people to realize this is what a baby
looks like when it's been shaken. I like people to
understand it's violent, it's horrific."
You can read
the entire Washington Post article here. Cathy
Sanders’ website is found here.
http://www.sbsprevention.com/ It’s well worth a
visit. Cathy has put some wonderful resources on her
website. Raising awareness may well save lives of
children and end a life-long toll that is suffered not
only by children, but also by their parents.
Email:
jeannemhannah [at] charter.net
