At the Bronx hospital, though, my client was met with suspicion, interrogation and accusations of child abuse, even after explaining her daughter’s accidental head bump with her brother to the hospital staff. Emergency room staff members called the New York City Administration for Children’s Services to report possible child abuse. A.C.S. workers and the New York City police interrogated her, as well as her husband and their 14-year-old daughter. At no time was this distraught mother told she could or should contact a lawyer. Nonetheless, when the baby was ready for discharge without requiring any medical treatment, A.C.S. told her parents that they could not take her home and that they must identify family members to care for her and her siblings. Otherwise, the children would be placed in the foster system with strangers. Though she was still regularly nursing the baby and no judge had reviewed this decision, my client had no choice but to comply. She left the hospital without her daughter.

Two days later, as a family defense lawyer who represents parents against abuse charges in family court, I met her. She was terrified and shaking during our first conversation, and told me she had not seen her children in two days. The first thing she wanted to know was when they could come home. That day, without any evidence of wrongdoing, A.C.S. filed a petition in Bronx Family Court accusing her and her husband of child abuse by intentionally causing their daughter’s skull fractures. A.C.S. asked the judge to issue an order to keep the children out of their parents’ home and asked that they remain with a relative.

To be clear, there’s nothing to suggest that Ms. Mollen and Mr. Biggs abused their child or that they should have been investigated or charged with abuse. The outrage is not that they were treated with compassion and understanding — it’s that low-income black and Latino parents in the Bronx are not.

Though the words “skull fracture” are enough to bring chills to any parent of a young child, in reality mild skull fractures in young, mobile children commonly result from accidents and generally do not require treatment other than observation. And though parents can usually describe the event or provide information about how they believe a skull fracture was caused, it is not uncommon for a parent to notice increasing head swelling or a bump hours or days after something happened, when the child’s activities and movements are long forgotten.

In my experience representing parents against abuse charges in the Bronx, I have repeatedly seen the mere existence of a skull fracture in a young black or Latino child brought to the hospital trigger a call to a state child abuse hotline, an investigation, a child abuse accusation in family court and the removal of children from parents. This is especially the case when a parent cannot tell the hospital exactly how the injury was caused because it may have occurred days before the symptoms arose or were noticed.