Former Children’s Wisconsin doctor sues over abuse investigation

A pediatrician who says he was wrongly focused by overzealous youngster abuse investigators has sued Youngsters’s Wisconsin and a number of other former colleagues on the Milwaukee hospital.

John M. Cox, 41, accuses the defendants of conspiracy, negligence, defamation and retaliation, amongst different claims, and of violating his rights to due course of and equal safety.

Cox and his spouse, Sarah Dobrozsi, previously of Wauwatosa, filed the lawsuit in federal courtroom in Milwaukee on Monday, three days after he efficiently accomplished a deferred prosecution settlement from his extensively publicized youngster abuse case from 2020.

After months of attempting to dismiss the legal cost of intentional youngster abuse, inflicting hurt, Cox pleaded no contest in November to neglecting a toddler below age 6, as a part of a deferred prosecution settlement. The case was dismissed on Friday, upon Cox’s completion of the situations of the settlement, which required him to take parenting lessons and do neighborhood service.

The couple, now dwelling in a Chicago suburb, are represented by Loevy & Loevy, a agency concerned in lots of high-profile civil rights circumstances, and Hale & Monico, one other Chicago legislation agency.

Defendants embody the Medical School of Wisconsin, Youngsters’s hospital, a number of medical doctors, a nurse practitioner, the Division of Milwaukee Youngster Protecting Providers and supervisors and social staff with the company.

Cox’s case divided the workers at Youngsters’s Wisconsin, a number of of whom supported him throughout his legal case, and provided opinions that the toddler’s accidents weren’t the results of youngster abuse. On the time, Cox labored as an emergency room pediatrician at Youngsters’s.

Cox and Dobrozsi, a pediatric oncologist who additionally labored at Youngsters’s, had been within the means of adopting an toddler woman within the spring of 2019. The couple already had two older sons, additionally adopted.

In Could 2019, when the woman was a few month outdated, she and Cox fell asleep in his mattress. When he woke to her crying, he feared he had rolled onto her. He took her to the household’s pediatrician, apprehensive he might need damaged the newborn’s collar bone.

Preliminary X-rays didn’t point out that, however one other physician noticed small marks on the insides of the newborn’s arms and one on her again. He notified the hospital’s youngster advocacy workforce, and a toddler abuse pediatrician examined the woman.  Further assessments revealed the kid had a damaged collar bone.

The kid went house with Cox and his spouse, who by settlement with the beginning mom and adoption company, had been serving as pre-adoptive foster mother and father whereas the authorized adoption course of performed out.

Later that evening, a pair of investigators from Youngster Protecting Providers got here to their Wauwatosa house and seemed on the child once more.

Cox was charged in January 2020. The criticism listed specific bruises and the damaged collarbone and concludes such situations don’t happen in nonmobile infants absent some abuse.

His lawsuit echoes what Cox and his attorneys insisted throughout his legal case: “This accident was of comparable magnitude and severity to incidents routinely skilled by numerous different loving, expert, cautious and caring mother and father who, regardless of their greatest efforts, expertise a momentary lapse of consideration which ends up in an unintended minor damage to their youngster.”

In response to Cox and Dobrozsi’s lawsuit:

When Cox awoke and had considerations the newborn may be harm, he introduced her to see his common pediatrician, Albert Pomeranz. As a result of Cox admitted he had been sleeping and wasn’t certain what occurred, Pomeranz mentioned he additionally wanted to refer the matter to Hillary Petska, a pediatrician with youngster abuse coaching.

Doborzsi introduced the newborn to Petska later for the examination. Later, Petska, Lynn Sheets — the physician who heads the kid abuse workforce at Youngsters’s — and others determined Petska had a battle of curiosity as a result of she labored with Cox and Dobrozsi.

Rita Ventura, a sophisticated apply nurse practitioner, examined the kid the following day on the Youngster Advocacy Middle. A Youngster Protecting Providers employee had taken the kid to that appointment from Cox’s home. Cox and Dobrozsi say they had been informed they could not be current as a result of, as pediatricians, they may have affect over the examiner.

Ventura’s examination was “inappropriate, incomplete and deeply flawed,” the swimsuit claims, and may have been “supervised, reviewed and corrected” by a doctor. She additionally acquired the police concerned to analyze “unexplained accidents.”

Wauwatosa cops who responded to the hospital did not discover proof of abuse, based on the swimsuit, and mentioned they’d been informed by Ventura that the kid was bruised from “head to toe,” which was not the case.

Nonetheless, Youngster Protecting Providers staff informed Cox and Dobrozsi they should be supervised round their very own youngsters for some time and Dobrozsi’s mother and father got here to stick with them to supply that supervision.

The plaintiffs contend the defendants realized the conclusion of kid abuse was incorrect after weeks of their advocacy and appeals. The defendants conspired to “smear Plaintiffs’ reputations, to generate false substantiation for the allegations of abuse, and to help the choice to take away (the toddler) from Plaintiffs’ care,” based on the lawsuit.

The youngster was faraway from the couple’s custody Could 24, 2019, and the adoption was ultimately canceled.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the lack of the kid, emotional ache and struggling, psychological anguish and injury to the plaintiffs’ private {and professional} reputations.

Earlier than he was charged, Cox gave NBC Information deep entry for a narrative that was extremely essential of the investigation. It relied on a number of nameless medical doctors at Youngsters’s who expressed considerations about how their friends concluded Cox had engaged in youngster abuse.

Contact Bruce Vielmetti at (414) 224-2187 or bvielmetti@jrn.com. Observe him on Twitter at @ProofHearsay.