Nearly ten years ago, Lorina Bourne and Jason Troy say their children were taken from them when a flawed investigation by child protective services led Texas state officials to wrongfully accuse them of abusing their youngest son.
Now, they are seeking justice. Bourne and Troy have filed a federal lawsuit against several members of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), and Ascension Health, the private health care system that operates Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas. The latter is the children’s hospital where, according to the suit, Bourne and Troy’s youngest son, Jason Jonathan Troy, was improperly assessed in 2015 to have suffered from shaken baby syndrome at five months old.
According to the suit, which was filed in April in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas Austin Division, and records obtained by ABC News, at about four months after his birth, Jason presented with an enlarging head circumference and vomiting. He subsequently had brain imaging done and was investigated for shaken baby syndrome. The fluid in his brain required surgery to drain.
Two and a half years later, the family’s attorney hired a doctor to review Jason’s medical records.
That doctor concluded that “Jason did have a chronic fluid collection in between his brain and inner skull. The fluid accumulates due to a medical condition of infancy called benign external hydrocephalus. In this condition there is a backup of fluid circulating around the brain’s surface.”
The cause of benign external hydrocephalus is unknown but research states it may be due to a problem with the cells that function to reabsorb cerebrospinal fluid, causing it to build up around the brain. The suit also states that Jason’s birth records show that he was “born with a collection of blood between his scalp and skull” that “was due to birth-related trauma.”
