Vaccines and Child Abuse Accusations
2007
There can be no debate that some vaccines cause very serious injury and even
death, to some children. This has been recognised by both the British
government(1980) and the U.S.A. government (VAERS Act 1986) for over 20 years
and both governments have provided compensation schemes to families with
children who have suffered such adverse reactions. Under both Schemes doctors
are required to report every adverse reaction of a child to a vaccine to a
central government body but it is reasonably estimated that less than one in ten
are so reported.
Many parents in many places around the world have given personal testimony that
following the administration of vaccines to their child, the child has become
seriously ill within hours or days. Such illnesses have taken many forms but
commonly they are febrile, listless, and some are reported to have experienced
epileptic seizures.
Within days or a few short weeks, parents report that their child then takes on
a totally different personality – they are distant, unable to make eye contact,
they are constantly restless and hyperactive – “they have gone into their own
little world” is an often stated assessment by the parents. The parent, quite
naturally, becomes extremely anxious and fraught as they lose contact with their
child. They want their child to be healthy and normal, as the child was in the
first few weeks after birth. So what has happened they wonder?.
In the Britain, the parent will usually seek help and advice from the Health
Visitor and perhaps their General Practitioner but this is when they are hit
with the first of the `Double Whammies’.
The Health Visitor reports them to the Child Protection agencies as their child
is “failing to thrive” and is not reaching its expected developmental
milestones. They are seen as over-anxious and if they seek a second medical
opinion, they are accused of `Doctor-shopping’. In the UK they are then called
to a Child Protection Conference with all the assembled professionals usually
after being subjected to an extremely invasive child protection investigation.
They are not allowed representation although they are being accused of a
criminal offence of neglecting their child and they are summarily found guilty
merely on the opinions and suppositions of the professionals present, many of
whom they have never met before. Their child’s name is placed on the Children
`At Risk Register’ and they are now branded and stigmatized as `Child Abusers’
in their local community. They can expect no sympathy nor understanding from
their neighbours, friends, or even some of their relatives, many of them with
the horrifying thought, “there but for the Grace of God, go I” .
If they are fortunate, the parents will only experience this state of
stigmatization and the accompanying isolation and societal condemnation, if they
are unfortunate the matter will be taken to Court and the child will be removed
from their care, often permanently. Child Protection agencies are reluctant to
take this latter step, not because they think the parents are innocent or can
manage the care of the child, but because such children with mental and/or
physical disabilities are not usually suitable for adoption or long-term
fostering which would be immensely expensive to the agency.
Health Visitors, Doctors, and social workers lack the knowledge, or find it
incomprehensible, or simply collude in the Dept of Health propaganda that
“vaccines are safe” and deny even the possibility that the vaccines are to blame
for the child’s mental or physical disabilities and developmental delays. To
challenge the received wisdom of the Department of Health would be a heinous sin
in professional circles with appropriate chastisements and sanctions likely to
follow.
But worse is to follow for the parents of the mentally and/or physically
disabled child. Firstly they are left to cope alone with the demands and needs
of their child who requires almost 24 hours a day supervision, sometimes has to
be fed, and their personal care needs met. The parent becomes gradually and
totally exhausted and emotionally and mentally drained. But worse awaits them –
the Triple Whammy!. If they have been persistent with seeking help for their
child or just lucky, they may have obtained a diagnosis by a psychologist that
their child is autistic within the Spectrum of Autistic Disorders and requires
special education provision suitable to his/her needs. The child is probably now
aged 7. 8. 9, or 10 years. They then face years of battling with the Education
Authority to obtain a Statement of Special Needs and even when this is finally
achieved, and usually only after appealing to a Special Tribunal, the Education
Authority can’t or won’t make the appropriate provision. Either because the
Special Schools in the area have all been closed under the central government
policies of `integrating’ all disabled children into mainstream schools or
because the Education Authority do not wish to bear the very high costs of such
special education.
Although it can occur earlier, it is usually at this point that the parent is
accused of `Fabricating or Inducing the Child’s Illness/Disability’ a catch-all
theory of child abuse based on the scientifically fraudulent and infamous `Munchausen
Syndrome By Proxy’. The parents are stunned – it is unbelievable!. They are
now accused of causing their child’s autism or other disability, perhaps
Asperger’s Syndrome, or ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or Cystic Fibrosis, or
ADHD, or any combination of these disabilities or diseases. !.
And there is no possibility whatsoever that their child will receive the special
education to meet his or her needs nor the support which Social Services
Departments are required to give to children in need under the Children Acts. If
they ask for such services, they are simply told, “There are no resources”. And
if they ask why there are no resources, they are told, “Well because no one asks
for them!.” Or “all resources are invested in child protection services”. – Cach
22.
If they are lucky, the parents will be subjected to the rigours and shame of the
Child Protection Procedures again, or perhaps for the first occasion, but again
can expect no help. They will be placed under the supervision of a `Keyworker’
which amounts only to being under constant and intense surveillance of the
health and social worker and medical professionals and even the most innocent
event of a child falling from a bicycle and getting bruises, will be
investigated in minute detail and with barely veiled accusations that they have
harmed the child. If they need to visit a hospital they will be grilled by
nursing and medical staff regarding the child’s illness or injury and no
rational reason will satisfy their accusers.
If they are unlucky, the parents will be brought before a Court in Care
Proceedings but again this is unlikely, for the reasons given previously.
So this is a brief glimpse into the world of the vaccine-damaged child, their
parents, and their siblings and other family members who may be involved. But
the experience is far more heart-rending and devastating for those involved.
Every day brings its miseries and heartache, and infrequently some joy as small
achievements are made. The care, compassion, concern of parents with disabled
children is absolute and immensely admirable. But their rewards are few and
their setbacks and sufferings are many. Many marriages break under the strain
and many individuals need psychiatric help for severe depression. The bitter
irony is that such a need for professional help is used to condemn the parent in
child protection proceedings and is often used against them in Courts. Heads you
lose, tails you don’t win.
And this situation prevails because the central government Department of Health
and the Department of Education and Skills cannot accept the testamentary
evidence of many thousands of parents that their child’s autism or other illness
is related to the administration of a vaccine.
Yet to simply assert, as such Departments frequently do, that "there is good
evidence that immunisation is beneficial" and the usually accompanying statement
beloved by vaccine supporters that "Vaccines are completely safe" are untrue and
irresponsible when unaccompanied by a caveat that for some children they can be
deadly or can cause them serious harm. The positions of the respective U.K. and
U.S.A. governments is that vaccination is for the benefit of the many (the
belief in herd protection) whilst only tacitly acknowledging the sacrifice of
the few. Unfortunately, the few are becoming the many in the case of autism
where it is now claimed with reasonable evidence of numbers, that there is an
international pandemic of autism.
Such beliefs by vaccine adherents obstruct, prevent, and denigrate any
reasonable attempts to investigate why vaccines cause death and serious injury
to some children, which children are most likely to be adversely affected, and
what can be done to help such children.
Studies linking vaccines to SBS, SIDS, and autism, such as those respectively by
Kalokerinos, Clemetson, Scheibner. Sprott, Wakefield, Blakemore-Brown, etc
should be welcomed and seriously examined and openly debated in a scientific
medical, educational, and social work community concerned about ALL children and
particularly those who suffer deaths and serious injuries from vaccines in
whatever form that may take, rather than having the dead hand of controls and
propaganda placed on them by governments and their blindly defensive acolytes.
In a world of increasing communications via the Internet, concerns regarding the
damage caused by certain vaccines will inevitably and increasingly reach the
ears of the general population, as is happening, and the days of fearing to `let
the cat out of the bag' are long since gone. If the percentages of the child
population receiving vaccines continue to decline because of fears by parents of
vaccine damage to their child and therefore the `herd immunity' is ineffective,
then the blame for such will lie with those who are complicit and collusive in
attempting to stifle scientific research and debate and to seek answers to help
those children who suffer death and serious damage from vaccines.
This is no longer an issue where heads can be buried in the sand, nor
scientifically-based research and reasoned propositions regarding vaccine
damage, can be denied. To continue to do so will continue to condemn many
thousands of children and their families to the tragedies of death and
disability (with minimal or no support by State agencies), the horrors of child
protection suspicions and investigations and the extremely high costs of such
investigations, and the removal of children from their families by misguided and
ill-informed State officials.
By Charles Pragnell
March 28, 2007
Diploma in Social Work and Letter of Recognition in Child Care
Expert Witness – Child Protection and Social Care Consultant and Child/Family
Advocate