Vaccines and Child Abuse Accusations

By Charles Pragnell

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

http://www.fassit.co.uk/vaccines_child20_abuse.htm