Couple Cleared of Abuse Likely Won't Get Child Back

Criminal charges dropped, but adoption has already taken place
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 9, 2015 1:40 PM CDT
Couple Cleared of Abuse Likely Won't Get Child Back
   (Shutterstock)

A young English couple cleared of child-abuse charges is unlikely to ever see their child again regardless, the Independent reports. Karissa Cox and Richard Carter took their six-week-old baby to the emergency room three years ago after finding it bleeding from the mouth. The couple was accused of child abuse, and their baby was put into foster care. "I was destroyed," Carter tells the Daily Mirror. "Every part of my body felt like it was being ripped away from this earth.” This week, criminal charges were dropped after new medical evidence showed that the child's bruising and apparent fractures were caused by a blood disease and vitamin D deficiency. Unfortunately for Cox and Carter, their child's adoption had been finalized earlier this year, notes the Independent.

The couple's lawyer, Michael Turner, says he presented medical evidence to the family court within moments of the final adoption being ordered, but the court didn't review it, the Guardian reports. And a legal expert tells the Mirror it's "almost impossible" to reverse a family court's adoption ruling, though the couple plans to try. “These innocent parents have been spared a criminal conviction and a prison sentence for a crime they never committed," Turner says in a statement. “Their life sentence is that they are likely never to see their baby again.” Cox tells the Independent if she can't get her child back, she plans on fighting for changes to the law so that something like this never happens again. “We took our child to the hospital seeking help and they stole our baby from us,” she says. (Shaken baby syndrome is dividing the medical world.)

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