Andrea Dunlop

Why indeed?

An excellent question in the year of RFK Jr.

Now, according to Serial's communications with me, Neary only formed her opinions about Dr. Jensen's work after speaking with other CAPs, and the evidence she uses to counteract Jensen's opinion in the one case she goes into detail about is that she showed anonymized records to several other CAPs who didn't share the opinion that the injuries were abusive.

I asked Randy for his take on this.

The media coverage about CAPS often make it sound as though they are the single deciding factor in everything from CPS to court decisions to police investigations.

And Amanda Surinofsky's lawsuit attempts to lay legal responsibility for everything that happened to her and her children at Dr. Jensen's feet.

The introduction to the lawsuit reads, quote, And it goes on to say that Dr. Jensen had been intentionally making false allegations of child abuse against innocent parents like Amanda for decades.

Under the claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress, the lawsuit posits that, rather than the prosecutors, CYS, and the courts acting independently, Jensen was intentionally aggressive with these entities in order to knowingly cause Amanda and her children distress.

And though much of the story Amanda tells on the show has to do with custody decisions and dealing with CPS, Serial also points it all back to being an issue with CAPS.

Neary stops short of saying Dr. Jensen is purposefully falsely accusing parents, as the lawsuit alleges, and instead says that Capps might be, quote, mistaken.

But it's hard not to see a through line, especially as Serial appears to rely on much of the same evidence that the lawsuit presents as being indicative of Dr. Jensen's wrongdoing, such as context-free excerpts from family court judge decisions about other families, and of course, the complaints of parents whose children were diagnosed by Dr. Jensen.

And according to Randy, this is a misrepresentation.

But to say that Diane Neary is misunderstanding the issue at hand is, of course, charitable.

Neary and the Serial team spent two years on this story.

They were certainly exposed to accurate information about child abuse medicine and abusive head trauma throughout the course of their reporting, even if they chose to disregard it.

Serial even reports on a trip they took to a medical conference on the subject.

She's putting this in the context of how arrogant some of these unnamed people have found Dr. Jensen to be.

And she said, I noticed it at a shaken baby syndrome conference that I attended in Utah last year.

There was an us versus them atmosphere.

Lots of panels devoted to fighting the naysayers, defense attorneys, medical experts who disagree with them, science that questions the validity of shaken baby syndrome.