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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

The CAC Saga

So,yeah...this happened. The Houston DA’s office partnered with the local Children’s Assessment Center to launch a public awareness campaign aimed at child abuse. It’s a noble goal, no one could deny that.

However, I would love to see a similar effort made to raise awareness of the CAC’s own bad behavior in the past, with an effort to repair the lives that it has torn apart. Recall, if you will, the clusterfuck caused by nurse Colleen Taft, resulting in hundreds of cases being brought under review. Problems with her work were brought to light in 2004:

Last week, District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal expressed concern that some people may have been wrongfully convicted based on Taft's work. The prosecutor in charge of the review confirmed Wednesday that the probe now extends to about 30 children's cases Taft worked on at Memorial Hermann.
"Yes, we are having those cases pulled," Oncken said. "We've gotten a list of those cases and are in the process of determining which ones resulted in criminal charges."
Oncken was the lead prosecutor in Coy’s case; her team benefitted from evidence gathered by the CAC, and then she was asked to look into the source of that evidence and determine whether or not it was ‘good’ evidence. Not surprisingly, there is almost no word on how this investigation turned out.

I applaud the DA’s willingness to fight for innocent children. Let’s see if we can’t also fight for innocent men and women.


http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Probe-of-nurse-s-child-abuse-exams-expands-1973880.php


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