Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
In July 2023, the investigative reporter Dyan Neary began hearing a series of stories with the same troubling pattern: Parents in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, a former steel region 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia, had had their children taken away after facing claims of abuse — claims they said were flatly wrong.
After some preliminary phone calls to parents who felt they’d been unjustly accused, as well as a child welfare caseworker for one of the families, Ms. Neary went to a Lehigh County commissioners’ meeting, where more parents came forward with their stories. The sheer number of attendees astonished her: Close to a hundred showed up, with speakers representing 13 families accused of abuse. “I think there might be a story here,” she recalled thinking.
One of the stories that stuck out was that of a young mother who’d had her 2-month-old son taken away for seven months following an emergency room visit after she says her son choked on some milk. “We were treated like criminals,” the mother said of her and her boyfriend. “I’m a mom who lost everything in less than 24 hours due to one doctor’s misdiagnosis.”
The mother’s remarks from that meeting are included in a new podcast by Serial Productions, “The Preventionist,” a three-part investigation into claims of misdiagnosed child abuse.
The show went through a development phase and a stress test, which involved dozens of conversations with experts and others in the field, said Jenelle Pifer, a senior producer at Serial. “We greenlight an idea once we feel confident that if we invest two years,” she added, “there will be a story to tell.”
At the meeting Ms. Neary attended, one physician’s name came up 108 times: Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, a child abuse pediatrician who parents claimed had wrongly diagnosed abuse.
The production team tried to reach her through a variety of ways. Ms. Neary attended Dr. Jenssen’s online trainings and even flew with Ben Phelan, a staff editor for Serial, to a conference in Utah where the doctor was giving a talk. No luck.
“We really wanted to speak to Dr. Jenssen to see where she was coming from,” Ms. Neary said. But she also understood her reluctance: Dr. Jenssen was a defendant in several lawsuits filed by at least 27 families in the Lehigh Valley.
But how, then, would the Serial team report on a person who would not talk to them?
“You have to take the loss,” Mr. Phelan said in an interview, adding, “but you have to keep working on the story.”
What the team did know was that Dr. Jenssen had worked in both New York and Florida. With its rich records system, New York offered a substantial paper trail, a great starting point for building a picture of Dr. Jenssen’s career.
But when it came to Florida, there was almost nothing in the public record.
“We had to breadcrumb her entire five-year stint there from the ground up,” Mr. Phelan said. That involved building a web of contacts through interviews with lawyers, academics, statisticians and forensic pathologists.
Mr. Phelan got his first break in Florida when he found a court filing that mentioned Andrew Caswell, a former caseworker in Gainesville. Mr. Caswell said he generally had no issue with Dr. Jenssen’s findings. But he crossed paths with her on one case in which he disagreed very strongly with her assessment, a case covered in Episode 2 of “The Preventionist.”
“Just that little crack,” Mr. Phelan said, opened the door to other caseworkers, some introduced to the Serial team by Mr. Caswell. Managers, state attorneys, former state senators and a former sheriff would follow.
The team talked to a diverse set of people, some of whom defended Dr. Jenssen as a passionate protector of children. But even those who disagreed with some of her findings acknowledged the real tragedy of child abuse in families, and the difficulty of being totally sure in every case.
The final episode, which examines the long-term damage of family separation, follows the ongoing case of Amanda Suranofsky, a mother in her 30s. Her five children were taken away after she was charged with aggravated assault for injuries to her infant son that she says came from an accidental fall. She is one of the plaintiffs suing Dr. Jenssen, the Lehigh Valley Health Network and others.
The Serial team pieced together Ms. Suranofsky’s story from a year’s worth of phone calls and visits to her home. The team also presented the baby’s anonymized medical records to three experts, including two child abuse pediatricians, or CAPs.
It took a long time to develop relationships with those CAPs, Mr. Phelan said, and for them to agree to examine Dr. Jenssen’s past cases. Ultimately, the team spoke with more than a dozen CAPs over the course of their reporting. The level of understanding that was built is a source of tremendous pride for the team, Ms. Pifer said. Five child abuse pediatricians from across the country would agree to publicly participate in a round table with the Serial team to discuss the sensitivities surrounding child abuse detection.
“Relationships with sources are like relationships with anyone, in a lot of ways,” Mr. Phelan added. “They are based on openness, respect and trust.”
The post In ‘The Preventionist,’ the Right Way to Protect Children Isn’t So Clear appeared first on New York Times.
