With stunning speed, a difference of opinion among respected doctors at two Boston hospitals escalated into a child custody battle involving allegations of medical child abuse, and it wasn’t an isolated case. The Globe reporters found that, in the last 18 months, Children’s Hospital in Boston, the top pediatric hospital in New England, initiated medical child abuse charges – or threatened to do so – in at least five cases involving parents who opposed the hospital’s diagnosis of their children. All the cases involved poorly understood, complex illnesses with physical and behavioral symptoms, and the parents resisted the predominantly psychiatric diagnosis given by the Children’s Hospital staff. The series focused on one case involving 14-year-old Justina Pelletier and showed that these emotionally-charged conflicts are only likely to grow over time across the country. More and more, the medical community is being asked to intervene in more complicated cases involving children with severe physical and psychiatric symptoms, and the state’s child-protection agency is under fire to take seriously the many versions of child abuse. The series drew the largest social-media following of any story at the Globe in the past year, as well as triggered several hundred emails and letters from readers who were pulled into a story that challenged both the intellect and the heart.
