Chapter 1: What alarming situation in Lehigh Valley prompted this investigation?
This is Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of Dealbook. Every year, I interview some of the world's most influential leaders across politics, culture, and business at the Dealbook Summit, a live event in New York City. On this year's podcast, you'll hear my unfiltered conversations with Gavin Newsom, the CEO of Palantir and Anthropic, and Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.
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Hey everyone, it's Rachel. We're doing something a little different today. We're going to take a pause this week from the culture specials that we've been sharing on Sundays because today we wanted to share the first episode of a new series from our colleagues over at Serial. It's called The Preventionist. Like so many of their shows, it's a remarkable story.
This one is about a bunch of things, including families navigating surprising and enormous challenges and a public official who's trying to do the right thing in a very complicated situation. It's really good. The episode we're sharing today is the first of a three-part series, which you can find by searching The Preventionist wherever you get your podcasts.
And take note, the whole series is available for free for a limited time. So binge away. Okay, so the Sunday special team will be back with the show next week. And here is the first episode of The Preventionist.
One evening in August of 2023, I watched a woman step up to the mic during a meeting of local government officials in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She was young, early 20s, strikingly pretty, wearing a pale pink blazer. She's short, five foot nothing, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the microphone. She had five minutes to convey, basically, any parent's nightmare.
My two-month-old son was happily drinking milk from his bottle when he quickly started choking, turned blue, and went limp. My boyfriend transported our son to the changing table as I grabbed an anti-choking device and my boyfriend began assembling it. I never ran so fast up the stairs screaming at the top of my lungs for help.
She described the panic in the house, a baby not breathing. She and her boyfriend, the father of the child, lived with her parents. Everyone was home when the baby started choking.
My father rushed downstairs and immediately started doing chest compressions as I dialed 911. Two pumps of the device and my son was conscious, gasping for air and coughing up milk.
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Chapter 2: How did Mark Pinsley become involved in the child welfare crisis?
He wanted to use his skills to do more than just audit the county's payroll. And he was good at it. In his first few years, he investigated a big pharmaceutical company that was overcharging for prescription drugs. And he discovered a county nursing home had failed to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars. His audits have saved the county and its taxpayers millions.
To hear Mark tell it, the idea for his next big project kind of came out of left field. One day, he and his wife were out grocery shopping.
I hate waiting in lines. And my wife was in, well, we were in line to, you know, pay for groceries. And I'm like, I'm just going to go watch TikTok. And so I was watching TikTok, you know, just kind of wasting time, scrolling away. And a video came up.
Your favorite author here speaking to tell you about a complete win a week ago.
Mark almost swiped away because, for one, his favorite author is Stephen King. And this woman, he didn't even know who she was. But he lingered.
And then she said Allentown. And, like, so then I paid attention. And then she said Children and Youth, and I was paying more attention.
Allentown is in Lehigh County, and the Office of Children and Youth Services is a county agency. In other words, Mark's territory. And the woman talking in the video was not only an author, she was a lawyer who'd represented a couple in a year-long fight against the false accusation made by a local hospital of child abuse. They'd won.
The county had withdrawn its petition to remove the couple's child. Mark wondered if the county was wasting time on losing fights, it might also be wasting money in the process.
I'm like, yeah, there might be money there. Let me go find out. And so like I immediately emailed right away.
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Chapter 3: What experiences did families share about false abuse accusations?
When she finally did get a genetic test at a different hospital, a diagnosis came back. Type 1 osteogenesis imperfecta.
And wouldn't you believe it, the child has brittle bone disease.
That same day, her now ex-husband was released from jail. And one month later, all the criminal charges against him were dropped.
Like, I can't stand it.
Mark had interviewed more than a dozen families by this point, and he'd reached his limit.
Like I can't live knowing that America is like that or that Pennsylvania is like that. Like I have to do something about it.
A reminder, Mark is a controller. He has zero oversight of child welfare services. He can't intervene in CYS procedures. He can't dictate hospital policy. But what he can do is look at the money, find out what all this was costing the county. And he could make that public.
He could write a report that might put pressure on the people who could change policy at CYS, the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners. Mark started tallying up the costs. Caseworkers, attorneys, judges. The county pays for their time. The county pays for foster care and for mandated psychological evaluations. When a judge orders parents and kids to do therapy, the county pays for that, too.
If the abuse allegation turned out to be wrong, that seemed like financial waste to Mark. He was on a tear now, thinking about these families.
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Chapter 4: How does the role of child abuse pediatricians influence allegations?
Once it was printed, Mark knew the commissioners wouldn't cut his budget. Because if they did, the public might interpret the move as punitive, since the original number was right there in the budget book, in black and white.
And every day, I called the finance department. Has it gone to print yet? Has it gone to print yet? Has it gone to print yet? And Wednesday morning, it went to print. I literally saw the woman leave with the flash drive to go get it to the printer. I called the solicitor. I'm like, I just want you to know, the report's going out today. And there's going to be a press conference.
And we're coming to the commissioner's meeting tonight. And he's like, don't do it. Like, don't put it out. And I'm like, no, we're putting it out.
Mark published his report to the county website on a Wednesday morning, issued a press release, and immediately got to work coordinating with the families. The commissioners' meeting was that same night, and all these families had to get ready, fast. The yellow family, who had the baby with brittle bone disease. The gray family, who had been accused of Munchausen.
The blue family, the orange family. All these people Mark had spoken to privately. He'd been encouraging them all along to tell their stories, but he knew it was a big ask.
And so they, I can't imagine what it was like being on their end, but I can imagine there's a lot of conversation going on about like, do we really want to do this? Like our neighbors don't know right now. Right. Our neighbors don't know that we're considered child abusers are only our closest friends and family know. And we are now going to announce this to the world.
And then that night you saw like there was a line that went from, I mean, like you don't get the picture of this, you know, without seeing it, but there was a line that went from the door out to the street. And that is not a short amount of people. That's a lot of people to make that happen.
Close to a hundred people had shown up.
It was unbelievable. It just, I can't even describe what the feeling was. Cause it's like, you don't even know how to feel. Do you feel happy or do you feel really sad?
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Chapter 5: What systemic issues are highlighted in the child welfare system?
This is abuse. We are traumatized. We are afraid of doctors now. I'm afraid of doctors now.
We still have a lot of sleepless nights. You try to push it to the back of your mind, but the awfulness of what happened is always there.
For me personally, it's about the shame. It's unimaginable to be wrongfully accused of child abuse. For all of us, a lot of the damage is already done. In the long run, the children wound up home, but also wound up kind of broken.
The testimony goes on for two hours. Several of the commissioners seem to be listening closely. Others seem maybe a little uncomfortable, looking down at the desk or at their laptops. And then it's over, and the room gets quiet. Mark already knew a lot of what the families were going to say, so what he most wants to hear now is how the commissioners are going to respond.
All right. So I have a couple of brief statements.
This is Jeff Brace, chairman of the Board of Commissioners.
The general statement that I'd like to make is that the county of Lehigh has a legal and moral obligation to investigate every allegation of child abuse brought forward to county personnel and agencies. I don't think anybody in the room disagrees with that. And I think we will continue to make sure that happens.
A couple other commissioners respond as well. They have kids themselves, they say. They can't imagine the trauma these parents have endured. One says her heart is, quote, absolutely broken hearing about it. But they don't go further than that.
They don't say a word about any of the changes Mark recommended, including his main one, requiring a second opinion from a doctor if a child is going to be removed from their home based on a medical finding. At one point, Jeff Brace, the chairman, says that Mark should have sent his report to the state's Department of Human Services, which sets a lot of child welfare policy. Mark pipes up.
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