We won!! Bring Baby Elliott Home: Support the Kondor Family

Hi there! My name is Jonathan Kondor. My family and I desperately need help and prayers. In short, my wife Destiny and I had our baby wrongly removed from our custody due to false accusations of abuse and medical neglect, and the lawyer assigned to me by CPS is impossible to find or get a hold of (her office is gone, phone disconnected, and cell and email gets nothing returned). The case is incredibly complex, but the truth is we genuinely never did anything to harm our child, and hospitals genuinely have. I'll try to keep this brief yet complete, like a John MacArthur sermon... 

Three months ago, on August 19th, the Lord blessed me and Destiny with a beautiful baby boy, our first and only Elliott James Kondor. We chose "Elliott" because it means "the Lord is my God," to us a first fruit of sorts. At birth, his genetic screening was positive for cystic fibrosis, but all ultrasounds came up negative, and all doctors that saw him in the first 6 weeks of life called him "perfect." When he was 3 weeks old, we got the accusation of medical neglect for not following up with a doctor that we did not like (we left his practice and immediately drove to see another doctor literally within minutes). End of September-beginning of October, he seemed to have a little neck sensitivity at times, Destiny noticed his soft spot wasn't as soft as it usually was, and he had a few tiny bruises pop up on his side and stomach that were likely from Cystic Fibrosis related vitamin k deficiency. We planned to ask our primary care physician about the symptoms after his second heel stick test on the 2nd since they didn't seem severe or related. On Oct 2nd, his second heel stick test went wrong by not actually clotting. It took time for Destiny and my mother in law to notice since it was wrapped well, so when they got home, they had the bleeding in and out of control throughout the day. Remember it's just a heel stick, so the actual amount of blood lost isn't that much, but he later started showing other odd blood loss symptoms: disinterest in eating, somewhat lethargic, then vomiting with small bits of blood in it. His foot bleeding increased. I rushed home from Bible study at that point, and I tried to stop the bleeding myself, but he oddly was suddenly going pale, so we rushed him to the ER. Our ER visit that night took them 10 hours to get him a blood transfusion (or any liquids at all) during which he suffered severe anoxic brain injury, then he was flown to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, and they immediately blamed us for his injury despite a lack of retinal bleeding, broken bones, or chest/back bruising. It was only because he had a "neck sprain" (I'll explain the quotes later) on the MRI and the few small belly bruises. We spent about 5 weeks in Cook's with him, over 2 hours away from home, only for CPS to take custody of him on the very day he was set to be discharged to go home with us, Thursday, Nov 7th.

Because of their assumption that we were abusers, much of the medical staff at Cook's were all extremely critical of every move we made and every word we said, even though we treated everyone extremely respectfully. We often got misquoted and downright lied about in the CPS reports, and almost nothing good made it into the CPS reports except for one nurse saying he thought we were doing a fantastic job. Doctors spent as little time around us as they could, always in a hurry to be somewhere else, subsequently not communicating well with us and totally misunderstanding good intentioned questions (which I had MANY). We were denied care conferences after only one in the PICU, which we requested incessantly in the regular hospital room until they ultimately told us we're never going to get one because the doctors didn't want to waste time on us when they thought they knew everything about the case. 

The reports also lie about his condition, claiming him incapable of eating due to his brain damage, officially declaring him blind, and stating things like he will never walk, talk, smile, eat, hear, etc. He was eating 4-5 ounces of breast milk (another thing the hospital accused us of medical neglect on, but not critical to explain here) every 3 hours at the time we got separated, he was gaining weight well once they let us feed him that much, he was able to track us really well with his eyes, he would wake up to startling noises, he was occasionally smiling, he could stand with balance support, he was grabbing onto things with his hands without being prompted to, he was self soothing by sucking on his hand, and just generally progressing like a fully functional, totally normal baby his age despite having 80% of his brain completely missing. Many nurses have witnessed this first hand, especially his physical therapist, but never made it into the report. God truly has shown his glory and mercy and grace through Elliott's impossible recovery, even if Elliott were to eventually end up with some long-term disabilities. There's a huge list of things he shouldn't be able to do right now that he can, and he continues to develop more and more, hitting new milestones expected for his age every time we see him in our CPS supervised visitations.

Now, the reason "neck sprain" is air quoted is because I just talked to a consultant (a lawyer in New Jersey & Pennsylvania, i.e. not licensed here in TX) for falsely accused SBS cases, and he says 90% of the time in the 100ish cases he's dealt with over the last decade or so, the "ligamentous injury" seen in the MRI is actually fluid from a brain bleed settling to the posterior spine from being laid on their back, so the MRI's *look* like whiplash ligament damage. He says 30-50% of his cases have brain trauma caused by abnormal pressure to the head during birth that never got looked at by the hospital staff who are assuming its abuse. That original trauma often leads to recurring bleeds...

We never thought twice about it since he looked great at birth and was released after 24 hours, but Destiny and I remembered that during the birth, Destiny kept trying to tell the nurses that her body was forcing her to push/she couldn't stop it, and the nurses told her to hold it back because they didn't think she was ready. When another nurse was brought in later for her opinion, she said they were wrong and that it was time to push, but our midwife wasn't there yet. The nurse then reached her hand back in to push his head back to hold him there for 5-10 minutes to wait for the midwife, and she specifically moved his head up to "relieve pressure" because his head was turned to one side. Well, we know for a fact that the neurologist at Cook's said his MRI showed a "contusion" (assuming trauma) on the left side of his brain. This is consistent with birth pressure injuries described by the consultant, but we need to scrape together all of Elliott's medical records, scans, and notes so that we can get consultants and doctors with lots of experience in mimic SBS cases to review them for our case.

I finally got a hold of the lawyer I was appointed by CPS, but she doesn't have experience with medical cases nor criminal cases. I recognize the gravity of this case, especially with them telling my family it's being escalated into a criminal case, and a court appointed lawyer will not have the time, experience, pay, nor the gusto to do the work necessary to medically prove this case is false. If they ruled against us, statistically, the male figure is most often convicted, and that's always a minimum 5 year sentence. In cases of infant death, which thank the Lord this isn't, they can apparently sentence life in prison or even a death sentence. It's mind-blowing that mimic shaken baby syndrome is so common, yet so widely misunderstood that a person could easily be wrongly sentenced to death after losing their child to a brain bleed they didn't cause... Regardless, in our case, Elliott is doing FANTASTIC, and we need to prove medically that it is impossible that we could have caused his injuries.  

We've shopped around a lot, and we've only found one law firm so far here in TX truly experienced enough with mimic SBS and networked with competent doctors who are able to tell the difference. They will cost $50-60k on the low side to cover their fees and the doctors' consultations and court time. If it ends up being more complex, it could run us over $100k. If we lose this adversary hearing, lawyers have advised us that TX will likely permanently remove Elliott from our custody due to the gravity of the allegations. At that point, the following criminal case would almost assuredly end in a minimum 5 year prison sentence for me despite my innocence, and Destiny would be left at home without our baby and without her husband.  

While I absolutely hate being a burden to others and actively work to be the opposite, this whole ordeal is going to be astronomically expensive, so if you guys can also find a way to help us financially, our level of gratitude and humility would be unbearable...

Most importantly, as always, if you guys would pray and spread prayer for us, that would be the greatest gift of all. Please pray that Elliott's health continues to be protected and that God may send us the resources we need to be brought back together in reunification as soon as possible. Please help our family...

With many tears, much love, and grace to you, 

The Kondor Family