Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThis
Arrested
The couple didn't comprehend the jeopardy they were in. During that interview and subsequent ones, they speculated and wondered aloud if it was possible they'd been too rough with the baby. In one session, Miguel told a social worker that he had massaged the baby's stomach when she was constipated. It was a folk treatment in his native San Salvador. His comment was heard in a very different way. What got written down was, "Father admitted to squeezing the baby."The next day, the couple say, a social worker told them that, in light of Liliana's injuries and the interviews, the baby was going to be put in foster care. If either of them made a scene, it would hurt their chances of getting her back.
Alice began to cry but composed herself enough to write out the baby's schedule. Miguel filled the diaper bag while Alice nursed the baby one last time, and then they carried her to a car waiting in the snowy street. She buckled Liliana into a car seat, and the social worker closed the door. And Alice lost it. She sprinted after the car, crying, "They took my baby!" Miguel ran after her to stop her, and they both crumpled onto the slush-covered sidewalk, weeping.
A series of emergency hearings took place over the next few days. Each time the Velasquezes appeared in court, friends, co-workers and members of their church came as character witnesses. Yet social workers did not interview any of them to ask what sort of parents the Velasquezes were.
A friend searched the Internet to find out what childhood diseases might result in broken bones. One condition jumped out: osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), "brittle bone disease."
OI is caused by a defect in the production of collagen, the protein that holds bones together. A person with OI doesn't have enough or has poor-quality collagen. In mild forms, a doctor looking at an x-ray can't always tell if the bones are right or not. Broken bones are often the first sign of the disease. "I've had parents tell me about breaking a baby's leg when they lifted them by the ankles to change a diaper," says Heller An Shapiro, executive director of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. "We get calls about false accusations of abuse all the time."
On February 15, Alice told Dr. Barbara Craig why she suspected OI, listing her own history of broken bones. She would later ask that Liliana be tested -- but the infant never was.
"Please test her!" Alice begged every doctor and social worker she encountered. "All I heard was, 'You're just making excuses for your husband. You'd better cooperate if you want your baby back,'" Alice says.
At their first emotional reunion with Liliana, in a visitors room at the Alexandria Social Services office, the Velasquezes noticed she was wearing the same clothes she'd worn when she was taken away the week before.
"Maybe the foster provider washed them," Alice said hopefully to her husband. But when they changed Liliana, they knew it wasn't so. Her undergarment was stained and smelled bad. Alice says the baby had a diaper rash so severe her bottom was bloody.
The Alexandria police knew where and when the Velasquezes were seeing their baby. That's when they decided to arrest Miguel for felony child abuse.
9 Medical Myths Busted
Video: How to Eat Healthy While Traveling
10 Great Gift Book Ideas
How to Cope With a Depressed Spouse
Joke: I was leading a tour through Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico…
Advertisement 
