Support Ariann East's Fight Against Injustice

On June 19th 2024 our lives were ripped apart. My name is Ariann East and this is my story on how my children were medically kidnapped. Anyone who knows us knows that we are good parents who love our children more than anything. I never thought that something like this would happen to me, and I can’t express in words how much pain and trauma this has caused us. A parent should never have to hear their child cry and beg to come home and have to leave them, and a child should never have to cry in confusion begging to come home not understanding why her mommy and daddy are leaving her. A newborn baby who was strictly breastfed should never be stripped from their freshly postpartum mother who they were extremely attached to. These are crucial bonding moments for a newborn baby which is also crucial to their development. My sweet babies are the victims in this situation and should have never had to endure this type of pain.

When my second daughter Aurelia was only 5 weeks old we noticed that she had decreased movement in her arm along with swelling. We contacted her pediatrician who made her an appointment for the next day. We took her in to see her pediatrician and he advised us to go to the children’s hospital because he believed her arm was fractured.

Keep in mind as you read that Aurelia was extremely jaundiced after birth and seen her pediatrician every single day for her first 2 weeks of life and 1-2 times a week after that and her pediatrician NEVER seen anything unusual or concerning like bruising swelling or anything of that nature.

At the children’s hospital they performed x-rays on Aurelia, and it was determined that she had around 20 fractures in various stages of healing all over her body. We were in complete shock and extremely confused how our 5-week-old newborn could have sustained so many fractures when she’s never had any accidents, never been out of our care, and never showed any signs of fractures or bruising until her arm swelled and had decreased movement.

That night we were told that Aurelias injuries were highly suspicious for non-accidental trauma and that cps and law enforcement would be involved. Both came to speak with us in the hospital that night. Detectives questioned us as to what could have happened to our child. We simply did not know, but we knew something medical had to be wrong. Detectives asked if we would be willing to let them look through our phones, so we gave them immediately. They also asked if we would be willing to let them search our home. We gave the detectives the keys to our apartment to go search it while we stayed in the hospital with our daughter because we had nothing to hide.

That night we were told that both of our children would be taken from us, which began a 9-month long journey of fighting for our children. We were already devastated that our baby had all these injuries and now we were being told that our children were being taken from us. We were absolutely distraught and terrified as our children had NEVER been away from us. I was forced to put my baby in the hospital bed and walk away as we were being escorted out of the hospital by security. I’ll never forget hearing my baby screaming and crying for me. They took my breastfed baby and my 2-year-old daughter who were both extremely attached to me. I was a stay at home mom. At this point our whole world was just ripped away from us, our whole lives fell apart. Through this 9 months we have learned the pure evil behind CPS.

Our children originally got placed with my mom and we got put on a safety plan where we could be around them as long as it was supervised. This did not last long. The day after Aurelia was released from the hospital CPS showed up and took the kids out of my mom’s custody due to my dad’s criminal history from over 25 years ago. My dad actually moved out of the home so that his grandchildren could stay with my mom and CPS still took my girls out of her care and officially opened a case. Thankfully we had another family member who took our girls in.

It took about 3 months for my children to go back with my mother all while my father remained out of his home. It was only possible because the judge ORDERED that they be placed with her. It took them until a few weeks before trial to allow my father to go back home.

A few days after Aurelia and Elliana were taken Aurelias Vitamin D came back severely low at a level 10 as well as other concerning labs indicating infantile rickets. The Child abuse pediatrician and CPS completely ignored this and stated that vitamin d deficiency doesn’t cause fractures. They said this and then began giving her excessive amounts of Vitamin D as well as fortified formula. They gave her so much vitamin D that her levels went dangerously high to over 300. They were treating her for infantile rickets and denying the fact that she had it. The day before Aurelia’s discharge they also added Malnourished to her file, when we asked about this the doctor stated that they just add that on there for “billing codes” showing her ill intent towards us. That same doctor also continuously called the police and threatened CPS that she would call the sheriffs if this child was released into our care.

Aurelia also had a follow up bone scan 2 weeks after the first which showed that Aurelia had 3 new fractures since being out of our care. When bringing this up to SW she stated that they would be getting more bone testing done which never occurred, In fact they tried stating that the fractures were not new and “could have” been there last time and were just missed on the last x-ray which is not possible because they did a full body x-ray. After this they did not do any follow up x-rays to see if she was still getting fractured. In fact they REFUSED more bone scans and also refused to do a full genetic panel on my daughter.

From our second meeting with CPS they were automatically bypassing us, which means they were not offering us services to get our children back and that their end goal was to adopt them out simply because we would not admit abuse. Despite hearing this we fought and continued to participate in a parenting class, a child abuse intervention program, and therapy to show that we were willing to do anything to bring our babies home.

We were told multiple times throughout these months that our progress in our classes did not matter as we were being bypassed. Despite hearing this we continued to fight and do our services.

CPS would lie to us and lie to the judge multiple times about various different things. Child abuse pediatricians work hand in hand with cps to take as many kids as possible. They never actually did an investigation and strictly took our kids and attempted bypass based off of what the Child abuse pediatrician said.

In the beginning we were only allowed to see our children 3 times a week for 1 hour. This was devastating as we went from them never being out of our care to seeing them 3 hours total a week. Thankfully a judge eventually ordered that my mom be a 3rd party supervisor and had discretion of the visits so we began having 8 hour daily visits with our children.

While all of this was happening, we reached out to an expert endocrinologist with 40 years of experience. We flew across the country to see this doctor to get his professional opinion on our child. While there we (parents) got tested for the genetic disorder hypermobile Ehlers Danlos syndrome. After doing the test it was found that I did have this genetic disorder. With me having EDS Aurelia had a 50% chance of acquiring it from me. He also reviewed all of Aurelias medical records and declared that she did in fact have infantile rickets. So, our daughter had 2 different disorders that contributed to her having fragile bones that caused fractures with normal handling.

Getting answers and a diagnosis was a relief. CPS and the child abuse pediatrician did not care though because they have an agenda to push and would not go back on what they said. Through this all the Social Worker also called law enforcement MULTIPLE times questioning their investigation and asking them if they were going to file charges. Even after a detective told her that he did not get the feeling that we abused our children after looking through our phones and our home she kept pushing. She wanted us to be arrested to make her case stronger. Thankfully we were not arrested.

Through it all my daughter was still having very concerning symptoms. She was very delayed in sitting up and using her thumbs and she also had and still currently has cracking and popping in her bones. This is not normal for a baby and we tried getting answers from other doctors but due to the open CPS case they refused to listen to our concerns and just assumed we were trying to get a second opinion from them. We know now that her popping is from her EDS but its still unsettling to hear on a baby.

This is not every detail of our story as that would be far too much for you all to read but these are the important parts. After 9 long months of pain, confusion and trauma we had to go to trial to fight for our children and it was a very rough 3 days but in the end it was ultimately decided by a judge that the allegations of child abuse were found to be NOT TRUE and every count the department had against us was determined to be not true and therefore dropped. Our case closed immediately, and our children were returned home. I am extremely thankful that my children are home and it’s sad to say that many others don’t have this same outcome. We are considered one of the “lucky” families which is absolutely heartbreaking. The past 9 months have been the hardest of my life and I would not wish this pain on anyone. I will now use my knowledge and my experience to help other families. This has become an epidemic and we need to make change.

Due to all of this Carlos had to go down to only a part time job

this has caused us extreme financial hardship

we have legal fees to pay and also no longer have our own car. Anything helps