Hi, my name is Michael DeBakey. On January 17, 2026, his mother left my son, in the bath with a bottle of high strength draino (Liquid fire) essentially sulfuric acid at her mother’s house in Elgin, Oklahoma. She was bathing him in a personal restroom that she was specifically instructed by her stepfather not to be in. According to to his mom, she saw it 8 months prior and the safety cap was not all the way tight and the label was melted off so it “just looked like another bottle of shampoo”.. Yet her step father claims the safety cap was tight and the label was on and in a opened ziplock bag. None of their stories have matched up and hers has changed numerous times. So from what I’m told she supposedly closed the door and my son then poured the bottle of liquid fire on himself. When he began to scream, instead of calling 911, she tried to clean him off herself, causing more damage and pain. When she called her mom to ask what to do, she was told not to call the police and to just take him to the hospital herself. That hospital is 1.5 hours away from her house. I was told by her mom the burns weren’t that bad and to not worry about coming, but after driving six hours in the middle of the night from Houston, Texas, I found my son with second-degree burns on 75% of his lower body, and his skin had completely melted off. For 10 days we were in the ICU at Integris Hospital in Oklahoma City.

While in the hospital, he had to relearn to walk, and when we went out to the hallway for his second session, she refused to come and help hold him up and proceeded to stay on her phone and watch the football game. So I had to grab a nurse, and ended up having 2 willingly come help with one on his other side and one kneeling in front in case he fell forward. After we got out of the hospital, I noticed that her home was in unsanitary conditions to the point where there were sippy cups with curdled milk throughout, and the carpet where he played reeked of dog urine. I was told by her mom I was not allowed to spend the night, so after coming back the next day, I noticed that he was in an overfilled diaper from front to back, and when she went to change it I saw he developed a rash in the area that had healed the most before we left the hospital. I then packed him up and took him back to Texas, where he was treated at the emergency room. After a third visit because oral antibiotics weren’t working, they realized that he had a staph infection, and he had to be put on an antibiotic IV to prevent the infection from spreading or else they’d have to literally amputate his leg..

She then came to the hospital and took him back to Oklahoma using an illegitimate affidavit saying I abducted him giving her custody, which was denied the next day. I was police escorted out of the hospital, and he has been living there with her since. Oklahoma DHS and police have done nothing to stop this woman and deemed the incident a “freak accident” instead of what most humans consider gross negligence. I now need to pay for an overwhelming amount of attorney fees to gain full custody so that something like this never happens to him again. No child should ever have to experience what my son did, and I no longer trust her to care for him.

Last year I was told by her stepfather my son was left in the pool unsupervised with the door closed for 2 to 4 hours at a time, and his mom even called crying saying he was left to get into OxiClean by her mother while she was in another room. My son has been known to drink shampoo straight out of the bottle while in the bath, so I can only imagine what would have happened if he had drank it that day. I still don’t understand how they can leave a chemical like that so easily accessible to a child.

Any support/advice would mean the world to us in getting my son back home to Texas, where he was born and has lived the majority of his life. He is autistic and hasn’t started talking yet, but even though she said he couldn’t, I have gotten him potty trained and taught him to swim last year when I heard about the negligence in the pool and forcing him to stay in diapers at 5 years old. Even after he made progress, I was told I was teaching him wrong and he should’ve been taught peeing sitting down facing the toilet. He just turned 6 and I’m so proud of his accomplishments. All I want is for my son to be safe, and live a happy life again. I’m more than willing to give everything up to be there as a 24/7 father for my son. My job has been understanding with the situation, giving me flexible hours, and my mother and sister have been saints, willing to help out whenever I need them.

I’m at a total loss for hope that the justice system does what’s best for my son since they closed her case after only a couple of months of “investigation” and after making contact with none of my family and 0/20 of the witnesses I gave them.. I have given them a mountain of evidence, and just had to play monkey in the middle with social workers to the point none of them answer back. It’s very scary and inhumane they can let someone get away with something like this.

Please help my boy.