Photos and memories are all that the families have of Tiffany and Dave O'Shell and their daughter, Alyssa, a beautiful baby with green eyes, a mop of red hair and a great smile. At three months, child protection workers took Alyssa and handed her to a foster mother.
"I know he would never hurt her intentionally," Tiffany O'Shell told a Commerce City police investigator about her husband and his treatment of their daughter, Alyssa. "He loves her to death."
Two weeks before, on June 17, 2008, Adams County child protection workers had taken Alyssa and handed her to a foster mother. They did so after a hospital found 11 broken bones in Alyssa's 3-month-old legs, but no bruises or other signs of abuse.
Dave and Tiffany had been allowed to see their daughter just once in those two weeks. Tiffany's lawyer was advising her to divorce her husband if she ever wanted her baby back. Clouds of suspicion swirled around Dave. Police were about to arrest him, he thought, for felony child abuse. He had grown more despondent day by day.
Nobody seemed to hear the family's pleas that there must be some other explanation for all those broken bones. [...]
What a dreadful conclusion for two depressed parents who have lost hope in life......& swift comdemnation by Child Safety Resource Group. So horrible!!
ReplyDeleteI have no faith in child protective agencies to do the right thing.
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