Collateral Damage

0:00True Story Media In July of 2021, Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torvinson filed a motion to amend the witness list in the case against John Cox to include the nurse who'd taken the phone call from him at 9.25 a.m. on the morning of May 9, 2019, because it was this phone call that caught John in a big lie. So I think it's really important to talk about medical history and the importance of medical history and the context of him being a physician and knowing that a medical history is used to come to a diagnosis, right? He knows that he relies on that every day through the course of this professional career. And here we have a person who knows the importance of medical history and relies on a medical history every day and reaching diagnoses for patients in the emergency room, giving a false medical history for this particular child, right? Physical abuse in infancy is common. When suspicious injuries are identified,

1:00documentation of a thorough history and complete physical examination is a critical first step. Specifically, injuries such as a bruise or inter-oral injury are uncommon before an infant is mobile and should raise a concern for abuse. That's a direct quote from John Cox's own research project on the early detection of child abuse injuries in an ER setting, which he actually wanted an award for during his fellowship. John Cox knew how crucial caregiver history is in detecting abuse. No one would have needed to explain to him why this phone call upended his entire defense. So we provide that information. We file the notice to amend the witness list and to include this information and have this witness testify a trial. And during the course of this case, he was represented not just by an attorney in Milwaukee, but a very high-powered law firm from the Chicago area, who I think they represent themselves to be the fifth largest law firm in the world, I think, if I recall correctly. And so he had two attorneys from that firm as well that

2:06were appearing on this case. And as soon as I filed that information and provided those reports, they soon got off the case or dropped off being is involved in the case. And Dr. Cox through his main attorney here in Milwaukee started talking about how can they resolve the case. So and then do you think this influenced the fact that he eventually took a plea deal? 100 percent. Every single one of those doctors that would have been called to the stand, every single one that Dr. Hicks or excuse me Mike Hicks and Bob relied on for his article, he lied to every single one of them with regards to the medical history. And I would have been able to cross examine every single one of them and talk about the importance of a medical history and then point out that he lied or gave a incomplete or a completely different medical history. And then I'd also be able to point out the child abuse literature that shows that a changing medical history is highly concerning for child male treatment. And in this context, it's these weren't just minor details being changed. This is a C shift in what he claimed happened that evening.

3:11There were already issues with John's story. He and his wife Sadie, a pediatric oncologist, had offered a number of possible explanations for the bruises observed on the baby. John told their pediatrician Dr. Albert Pomerance that maybe the bruises happened because of how he been laying on the baby, changing that implausible story to the explanation that he picked her up in a panic when he awoke to her crying. His wife Sadie speculated in an email to CPS that the marks might not even be bruises at all and that if they were, they could have been from a bobby pin left in the bathtub. One of the central claims in this case was the alleged failure of the child abuse team to obtain a proper history from John Cox. Hicks and Barrault that the doctors inaccurately described Cox's account of what happened, adding that this was not surprising, according to Sadie, because they hadn't spoken to John in person. Since the day of the incident, John had been consistent in describing the hours leading up to the morning of May 9th, 2019. He'd said that the baby had awoken at her usual times throughout the night and then again at around

4:155 a.m. like normal. The picture he had painted was one that any parent could plug themselves into, a sleepy morning with a newborn nodding off in bed with her during a cuddle. It was hard to imagine abuse in this context. What would have led this person with no known history of violence to suddenly snap? But the reality that the hotline call revealed, a sleep deprived parent alone with an inconsolable newborn who'd been up all night, is a very different set of circumstances than what John had told everyone else. This was a picture of someone at their wit's end and while John and his lawyers and the media became hyper focused on whether or not doctors could determine John's intent to harm the baby, the baby's injuries simply didn't match the role of her scenario. But his child abuse pediatrician Nancy Harper wrote in her report on the case, quote, forceful squeezing slash compression of the torso laterally can cause both fractures of the clavicle as well as patterned cutaneous trauma, meaning bruising. This constellation of injuries, including cutaneous trauma and a clavicle fracture,

5:19is clinically diagnostic of child physical abuse or inflicted injury. John had been able to stack up an impressive number of expert witnesses, but those opinions turned to dust in light of the lie revealed by the nurse phone call. And in November of 2021, John's defense threw in the towel. A plea deal today in the case of a Milwaukee area doctor accused of intentionally hurting his daughter. Dr. John Cox pleaded no contest today to child neglect, a lesser charge that resulted no jail time. Cox admitted in court to accidentally injuring his daughter after bringing her into bed with him, something the doctor never disputed. Another hearing is set for next May. Even in his plea, John was still evading accountability. And while this legal battle was coming to an end, another one was just beginning. I'm Andrea Dunlop and this is part three of our Nobody Should Believe Me special report on John Cox. If you're a subscriber on Apple Podcasts or Patreon, you can listen to all four parts of this

6:23series right now, Add Free. You'll also get access to the show's complete archive and are twice monthly subscriber exclusive feed. Nobody should believe me after hours. If monetary support is not an option, you can leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or tell a friend about the show. These are also great ways to help us, as is just being here listening each week. We'll be right back. When Fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy to layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest

7:26arrivals in store and on Lululemon.com now. And so we came to a resolution in the case where he entered a plea to a felony child neglect charge and then we had a deferred prosecution agreement for a year where he had to meet a number of conditions for that deferred prosecution agreement. If he met all those conditions, then we would vacate the plea that he entered and dismiss the charges against him. By the time John Cox accepted a plea deal, thousands of people throughout the country knew this story or thought they did. Thanks in large part to my Kixenbos reporting for NBC. I wish there had been a follow up story. I wish it had been doctor who talked to 15 doctors, lied to 15 doctors or something of that nature, right? Something that really talked about someone who knows about the importance of medical history and provided a false medical history. Why would he do that other than he was obviously trying to cover up what really happened?

8:27And what was the reason that you dropped that charge down to neglect? There were a couple different reasons. The reason that I was given by his defense team for pleading to a child neglect charge was that it would be more palatable for him to be able to still practice medicine eventually. And that he still wanted to provide his theory to the court that this was a situation where he rolled over causing the fracture. So even at sentencing or he was still arguing that fact or trying to contend that that was the factual basis for what happened even though it was abundantly clear and court that we disagreed with and believed it couldn't happen. But my aim in my goal was not to prevent doctor coughs from ever practicing medicine again. By all indications, he was very well respected and did a good job when he was at the hospital. So that was not the goal of my prosecution. My goal of my prosecution was protecting this kiddo,

9:29making sure this kid never got abused again. And what was the outcome with the for the child? The child did not go back to the Cox home. So the child was originally an pre-adoptive placement with the Cox and that did not happen as a result of this criminal case. And a large part of my factor in that is if he's not going to take responsibility for causing these injuries and we spent a great deal of time litigating this case and fighting motions, that child's life can't be on pause during that time frame. And to me, it's a very different case. Like I said, if he would have come forward and been remorseful and apologetic and said that he inflicted these injuries and he wanted to explore ways to make sure it never happened again, then this case is very different and has a very different potential outcome. Because John and Sadie were in the process of adopting algae when the investigation happened,

10:34they were in a very different legal situation than a custodial parent. We've talked about many cases with much more severe abuse on this show where parents took plea deals and retained their rights, but John and Sadie didn't have those rights to lose in the first place. A common thread about these stories of supposed false allegations of abuse is that these various systems are destroying families with little regard for the parent, but the reality is usually quite the opposite. Parents are given a lot of chances. The vast majority of the cases that my child-of-the-be-steam handles are it's bodily harm caused by a parent or a caretaker of those children. And we know that that family unit's probably going to stay intact after this incident takes place and after the criminal case concludes. And so we're always examining what's the best way that we can keep that family unit intact without there being violence taking place within the home in the future. I'm very adverse childhood experience focused. My goal is in Milwaukee County, we've studied our trauma rates for our children when they grow up into adulthood. And we have exceedingly high

11:38adverse childhood experience rates for our children as they grow up. And if there's one legacy, I could leave for this community. When I'm far gone, it's greatly reducing the rates of adverse childhood experiences for the kiddos in this community. I want them to just grow up and be in a loving, happy home without any violence, without any neglect. I want them to be safe. Whether or not John could have been a safe parent for this child had she remained in his care. Whether or not he was capable of being a safe parent to his other children in light of the injuries he inflicted on algae. Those are nuanced questions. And I honestly don't have a strong opinion either way. There were so many people who weighed in on John's behalf, both in interviews with the media and in letters to the hospital. They talked about what a strong character he had, what a good person he was. And I'm sure that many of the good things these people had to say about him are perfectly valid. But those good things didn't mean that he didn't hurt a baby. And while I

12:40will always maintain that no one deserves to be judged solely on the worst moment of their life, the impact of John's choices throughout the investigation went far beyond his own family. I don't expect Dr. Cox or anyone who's involved in any of these stories to come forward and magically admit that they lied and that they actually committed child abuse. I don't think that will ever happen. But when I think about this case, I think about the extraordinary harm that came from that lie, which we now know was a lie, because the lie wasn't included in the original media reports. We have an entire portion of the hospital that chose not to refer cases to the child abuse team, essentially disowning that team and claiming that that team was filled with bias, resulting in a measurable harm to children in our community who are the victims of child abuse and child neglect and for what end goal at the end of the day. And if there's any message I

13:41could convey, it's that. It's that that lie, that perpetuated lie that we know is a lie that Dr. Cox told caused irreparable harm to the children in Milwaukee County. The schism this created at the hospital is a focus of my kicks and vows reporting on the case, which is primarily based on conversations with Sadie and John and anonymous colleagues from Children's of Wisconsin. John Cox himself, who just been charged with child abuse when Hicks and Bots story ran, said that while he'd been trained on abusive injuries, just like the ones in his case, he'd grown uneasy with what he described as an aggressive approach by his colleagues. His wife Sadie cites ego, arrogance and power as the reasons for the charges against her husband. Several unnamed doctors echoed this sentiment and in Hicks and Baws follow up story on the case, which came out about a week after his first story. These anonymous doctors report that absents swift policy changes they would hesitate to bring their own children to the hospital for fear of being falsely accused of abuse. John's colleagues report wearing a cartoon image of his face on

14:46their name tags and tell Hicks and Baws that they hope the uproar of the case leads to meaningful change. The criticisms of the hospital are the ones we examined in detail in the last episode. The claims about the bruises, the allegation of misreading the blood test results that might be indicative of a bleeding disorder, and the allegation that a proper history wasn't taken. But this follow up piece ran in February of 2020, more than a year before it was revealed that this history, shaky as it was to begin with, was a lie. And no one really offers any specific critiques of the hospital beyond that. But even if the claims of the hospital's misdeeds were erroneous, the animosity and mistrust that had developed between the ER staff and the child abuse team captured and inflamed by Hicks and Baws reporting were very real.

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17:58all of Quince's edits and they have a really fun modern 90s edit styled by Jason Bolden up right now. It's got corduroy silk slip dresses all of the retro fun. So you know the deal, Quince brings you all of the luxury for a fraction of the price, shoes, jewelry, leather goods, and of course their iconic cashmere sweaters for sweater weather. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for exclusive app offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was nobody should believe me podcast. It's the best way to support the show. John accepted a plea deal in October of 2021. And as soon as his deferred prosecution time was up, he and his wife Sadie did what we've seen innumerable other parents do. And then the next thing he does is file a lawsuit against childrens of Wisconsin. I believe it's filed a day or two after the

19:03deferred prosecution agreement was complied with and the charges were dismissed. The lawsuit would eventually be settled out of court. The terms of that settlement are confidential, and without knowing anything more, there's nothing much to glean from the fact that this didn't go to court. This is a common outcome, and there are many considerations beyond guilt or innocent that go into the decision to settle. What's interesting about this lawsuit, what's audacious about this lawsuit, is that John Cox had already been caught in a lie, though it was a lie that virtually no one knew about. On the subject of the medical history, the lawsuit reads, quote, during this visit with Dr. Palmerance, and in every subsequent interaction regarding LG's injury, Dr. Cox was candid and truthful about the circumstances leading up to the injury. The original complaint includes 17 counts and alleges that the defendants from the hospital and CPS knowingly conspired to falsely accuse John of abuse. Remove his child and destroy his reputation, all to cover up for the errors that they allegedly made in the initial days of the

20:04investigation, and out of their own hubris and disregard for the bond between pre-adoptive parents and the baby in their care. While there are many claims made in the 70-plus page of Mended Complaint, it doesn't add much to the facts of the case. It mostly rehashes John's criminal defense that the records from the outside experts work sculptory and were unjustly ignored by CPS and the child abuse team. There are many details about things that were allegedly said to or about John Cox that are impossible to verify. The lawsuit also levels a broader systemic critique of the child abuse team, saying, quote, the Child Advocacy program built and maintained by the entity defendants was a system designed to confirm abuse rather than to fairly and accurately evaluate what happened when there is a possibility of abuse. This claim, like most of the claims in the lawsuit, includes no specific citations. And this rehashes much of what the anonymous sources said in the press, such as the Child Advocacy team was altering records. But again,

21:04it offers no specific evidence of this. From my understanding of how the internal system works at children's hospital, and this would be consistent with many hospitals across the United States, is that anytime a medical note is amended, there's actually a note indicated in the medical record system as to why that note was amended or who it was amended by or the underlying reason for it. So if there's any changes being made to medical records, there should be documented changes noted within those files. You'd be able to go back and see it. And one of the main requests we get from defense attorneys of late is asking for that, asking for any changes in the records or any changes in the notes that were entered between the case when it was seen at the emergency room versus when a caps physician became involved. And I have not, I have yet to see a case where there's been a documented change based on a conversation between a caps doctor and someone in the ER. So this idea that the caps doctors at Children's of Wisconsin were essentially pressuring the

22:10E-Doc ER doctors into confirming cases of abuse, like you have not seen any evidence of that. No, and in fact, I don't know why they would even say that would exist, because the ER doctors role is to respond to that emergency situation, hopefully stabilize the child, hopefully save the child's life. But then the case gets passed on to the additional experts. So they're giving an initial diagnosis based on what they're seeing at that point in time. But as more lab results are coming in, as more x-rays and imaging studies are being received, then additional diagnoses are being made in that case. And then that's no longer necessarily being done by the emergency room physician has been passed on to an attending physician or maybe a hospitalist or the caps doctor. There are specific complaints about Rita Ventura, who performed the initial abusive valuation, that the hospital breached its duty of care by referring to a nurse practitioner rather than to a child abuse pediatrician. And again, claiming that she didn't take a direct

23:10history from John and that she should have considered the outside expert opinions. People were making assessments very early on in this case. And again, based on the character of the individuals as they were interacting with those individuals. So with Dr. Cox and Dr. Cox's wife, as they were getting a history, but they were making assessments with only a quarter of the picture. And without any expertise involved in really providing that assessment or the underlying concerns that would exist as a result of that assessment. So initially when the child was taken to the and evaluated, there was linear bruising noted on the arms and linear bruising on the back. There was there was nothing known about the clavicle fracture. And as more information was gathered and all of the picture was put together, that child was abused and that could not have happened by accidental means. But I think that it's one of these situations where people go into it with a reverse lens of bias based on the individuals that they're dealing with and they're making judgments on it without the information and saying this can't be abused. There's no way this can

24:12be abuse because of the people that are involved. The lawsuit makes no mention of the blind review that confirmed this abuse. And it paints CPS's hiring of an outside expert, Cap Nancy Harper, saying that two of the defendants from CPS, quote, sent the medical reports provided by Dr. Cox to an outside consultant in an attempt to further discredit the now 15 physician supporting Dr. Cox's position that he had an accident with LG and had done nothing to abuse her. The lawsuit claims that the police in CPS didn't initially think the baby had been abused, but then decided to conspire with the other defendants to make it seem as though she had. And yes, that logic is hard to follow. It plays on a familiar trope that CPS and law enforcement relying on doctors' opinions because they're not doctors is evidence of collusion. And the reality is when it came to bias, Cox and DeBrosi had everything going for them. You know, I've handled 80-something abuse of head trauma prosecutions directly. And there were two

25:16cases that I've handled involving white defendants that stick out vividly in my mind. The first one is David Allen. We talked about that case and the number of experts that were brought in on that case. And the second case that I think of is actually an abuse of head trauma case I lost, where they again brought in a number of experts. The jury came back in acuity on that. It was a white woman named Carrie Heller who was a babysitter. And my question and I admit it, I was a little bit upset after the verdict on the Heller case, but my question to the defense bar was why is it on the cases involving Caucasian defendants where they get all the experts? They get the experts hired, the money is spent on those cases. And I think there's part of it is there's a clear bias they know that going to that case that juries are going to associate with a white defendant in the situation a little bit more than they may a minority defendant. And you mean this state it was paying for some of those experts in that case? The state was paying for all the experts in both trials.

26:17The lawsuit also rests on the notion that not only did the child abuse doctors, all three of them, misinterpret the blood test result that might have shown the child to have a possible bleeding disorder, but that they ignored other evidence as well. This was a claim that made it into Hicks and Bosphor reporting as well that the child abuse doctors were misinterpreting skin legions and discounting possible explanations. But this is the same red herring that made it into the media accounts. However you come at it, there were three bruises on the four-week-old baby that the parents couldn't provide a possible explanation for. Those bruises were the reason Dr. Pomeranse called the case in to begin with. And the baby didn't sustain any additional bruises through normal care and handling after being removed from John and Sadie's care. There was also some back and forth about an additional bruise in a photo that John's wife Sadie showed to the doctors evaluating algae. This bruise was meant to show that the baby bruised easily, but to Matthew's thinking,

27:22this bruise could be evidence of something else. There was a picture that was provided that showed a previous injury. And all the research regarding sentinel injuries bruising on non-mobile children demonstrates that that in and of itself is a concern for child abuse unless there is a documented cause for that bruise. So in this particular situation she's providing a photograph of a bruise on a child's face with no documented history for how that bruise was caused and trying to assert that this is demonstration that this child bruises easily because we have a photograph of a single bruise. The bruising easily can be ruled out in a number of ways. It can be looked at through bleeding studies, a lot of bleeding studies were done in this particular case. They can also be ruled out by how that child was cared for before and after. And one of the things that was noted and investigated was after the child was removed from the Cox family was whether or not there was any documented bruising on this child after being removed and there was none.

28:25And that was something that was monitored extraordinarily closely by child protective services. So if a child bruises easily, that condition's not going to go away in a day or two days. It's not something that just manifests in a single moment of time and then disappears and it didn't exist. And again, according to Dr. Mark Hudson, the misreading the lab test result allegation is just a red hearing. So I didn't see any hematologist that said this child has this disease based upon this lab result. That is not in there, not absolutely not. If we go put this child with somewhere else where they're getting normal care and handling and they don't get bruises, then they don't get bruises from normal care and handling. The lawsuit, much like John's criminal defense, hangs its hat on the outside experts saying that their reports should have been enough to upend the other doctor's evaluations. There is the persistent idea that if a doctor comes to the conclusion of abuse, it means they just didn't do enough to investigate every other possibility for each of the injuries.

29:28The idea that, counter to the scientific consensus, there is no such thing as an affirmative diagnosis of abuse. That child abuse medicine isn't legitimate. I think part of that problem is that there's a lot of misunderstanding about why tests are done. And again, this is going to go back to basic medicine, right? And if we think about, you know, testing, be that lab testing, be it radiographic testing, right? In my mind that kind of falls into a couple of big categories. One category is we'd sometimes do testing for screening. But basic, some medicine are based upon a history and physical. And then oftentimes what you're doing is you're ordering lab tests to confirm what you think clinically. And so lab tests are actually better at confirming disease when the scenario, clinical scenario is correct. They're not good at ruling out disease. So, you know, we typically don't do testing to rule out things.

30:29You know, everybody's familiar with like, strep throat test, right? Well, you don't get one every time you go to the doctor just because we want to rule out that you have it. We're only going to use it when you come in and say, geez, you know, I've got this sore throat and you look in there and examine and looks all red and flang and say, we're going to test for strep throat. But we don't, you know, we don't historically just sort of throw tests at things to then kind of put rule out things. And you don't start with your disease until I rule it out. You start with your normal until we discover there's evidence of disease and then we're going to test for it. And we're sort of doing everything backwards here. You've got a child who only bruises in this one scenario. They don't go on to continue to bruise. There's no clinical reason to think that they have up leading this order. But we're going to say, well, no, you can't say that until you've, quote, ruled it out with testing. Well, the reality is there's always one more test you could do. Right? And that's that's not how medicine works. And John Cox knew all of this and he knew he'd lied and he'd lied

31:32presumably because the truth was damning. And as a doctor with specialized training and child abuse, he knew that this wasn't just a small little change in the detail that boy I got wrong or or something like this was an entirely different story. And certainly probably anybody who thinks about that is going to realize that this is entirely different. Now I'm picturing, you know, in scenario one, we're picturing this this early morning event, perfect night. John Cox is well rested because he slept great all night long. And then this event happens. Well, that's distinctly different than a kid who's been crying for 12 hours and fussy and inconsolable. And whether that means, you know, that this child was hurt 12 hours earlier and it's been fussy and inconsolable since the time of the injury, maybe. Or whether that means this is a fussy and consulable kid and someone gets to the ropes and maybe, but it's certainly entirely different than the story that we're hearing before. And this is just not a thing that happens

32:36in accidental injury. Is that, you know, people come in and they tell exactly what happened, right? Because what they want is what's best for their kid, right? I mean, and you look at even sort of there's sort of acknowledgement that within the court system of this medical hearsay exceptions, that it's sort of recognized that people are going to tell the doctor the truth because they have a vested interest in that. And now we have something that's just entirely, entirely different and that certainly changes, changes everything. Both the lawsuit and Hicks and Bos reporting engage in some good old-fashioned fear long-garing about child abuse pediatricians claiming that they are too quick to call injuries abuse and that they have too much power. There's always this allegation that or it's common allegation that the good, the CAC team works too closely with law enforcement and CPS. Yeah, I'm not sure the basis of that. And I think along with that goes this implication that not only do you work too closely, you're actually running like I am telling law enforcement what to do,

33:37right? Which, you know, it turns out I just don't have that power. It turns out I know I also get to call up the prosecutor and tell them how to lay out their prosecution and all of those things. You know, I think that there is just a fair about a sort of mythology that goes along with that. But is it based upon do child abuse pediatricians tend to work relatively closely with child reduction in law enforcement and attorneys and things like that? I think the answer is yes. But at the end of the day, that's not me doing their job, but that is me making sure that I am passing along the best medical information we have and making sure that they understand that in the context of what's going on. And I would hope we'd all kind of want that, right? Like, I don't know a lot of cops that went to med school or, or, you know, or they're rotating through the unit that does child abuse. Is it reasonable that they might need some education about sort of what's happening here and what the significance is it of, you know, these findings is medically?

34:40Yeah, that seems to make sense to me, right? And I'm putting the weird part of it, sometimes it goes the other way, right? So, you know, you get the, you know, the call from a, an investigator who is all hot in the case of a tibia fracture, a toddler, and you go, cool your jets, it's a toddler fracture, it's probably accidental. Right? So, I mean, like, we'd like people to have the best information possible to do their jobs. The idea of intent hangs heavy over this whole thing. What is abuse and what is an accident and who gets to decide? None of us will ever know what was in John Cox's heart or mind on the morning of May 9th. The evidence shows that he heard a baby after a long night of no sleep, alone with an inconsolable newborn. It's a horrible tragedy for the baby who suffered bruising and a broken clavicle, for the two boys who had lose their new sibling, and for Sadie, whose world was about to be turned upside down. And it was also a tragedy for John himself, for whom this incident was surely one of the lowest

35:44moments of his life as a parent, as a doctor, and as a person. And these actions don't negate everything else that he was to the people who loved him. It's just that none of that disproves abuse. And I don't doubt that he was a loving parent. I think, you know, again, I've met a lot of people of hurt kids. And I don't think any of them didn't love their kid. Right? They lost it. I'm not saying they're not responsible. I'm not saying they didn't know what they did hurt their kid. And that plays right into sort of, you know, this idea that people who hurt their kid don't seek medical care. You know, I think this idea that someone hurts their kid doesn't also want their kid to get the care that they need. You know, that's not necessarily true. Right? Further, I think that's a really complicated, that's a really complicated thing. Because we do know that sometimes when kids get hurt by adults, those adults do delay seeking care. Right? So if you look at, you know, John Cox's

36:45case, his wife has due to land that day. I don't think there was a part of John that thought, you know, she's not going to want this kid to get care if the kid's not moving their arm. That's not going to fly. Right? So even if he didn't want to bring it in, he didn't have a choice. He was, he was wife, some pediatric oncologist. Yeah. He's not going to come home and go, gee, that's weird. The baby's arm was moving when I left and it's not moving now. Right? I mean, you know, that kid's good. That kid's going to show up for care at some point. Thumbtack presents Home Overwhelm. Everywhere I go in my house, it feels like an unfinished project is heckling me. The uneven grout on the kitchen backslash stares me down. Do I have to find a specialist to fix that tiling mess? The rips carpet by the basement door snags my shoe. Do I rip out all the carpet or just replace that section? What do I wait? What if I just use Thumbtack? I can find top rated pros for over 500 home categories and projects. Easily

37:49compare prices and read reviews on Thumbtack. Download the app today. Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at Lululemon.com. The evidence shows that John Cox was the perpetrator in this case. But once he connected with Hickson Baugh, who had been actively soliciting stories about fall saligations, he became the victim of the story. And in this reversal, the blast zone of the damage multiplied. It became very much a divided hospital and the ER definitely drew a line in the sand and chose their colleague over our children.

38:51For his part, Mike Hickson Baugh leaned into the drama his story had unleashed. Posting on his Twitter that children of Wisconsin had been, quote, bombarded with angry letters. He reposted some of these angry letters to the hospital on his Twitter page. When the American Academy of Pediatrics included an article in their trade publication entitled Media Coverage of Child Abuse Pediatricians, Bretton's Children's Safety in January of 2020, right before Hickson Baugh publishes the John Cox story, he screenshots the headline on Twitter with his sideways eyeball emoji. In this same thread, Hickson Baugh claims to refute the AAP's claim that doctors can't speak to the press out of privacy concerns by saying that the parents signed HIPAA releases, and that the doctors just chose not to speak to him. And we already addressed why this is insufficient, especially during an active child abuse investigation. Hickson Baugh, however, seems to have no qualms about the children's privacy, while LG is referred to only by a pseudonym, likely because John and Sadie couldn't give him permission to identify her. His other stories in the

39:54Duno-Harm series use the full name and photographs of the children who are subjects of active child abuse investigations. And in this series of tweets, Hickson Baugh's tone is downright glib, mocking the AAP's assertion that children's safety is at stake because of reporting like his. But if there was any question about whether or not that was true, it was answered by what happened next at Children's of Wisconsin. I had known firsthand through cases that had come into my child abuse unit that kids with a piece of head trauma who were died as a result of that abuse of head trauma. Kids who suffered immersion burns inflicted by a caretaker. Those cases were not being directed by the ER as highly concerning for child abuse. And we're in some cases being missed by the ER and information was not being relayed to law enforcement in a way that was helpful to the investigations. And it was a disservice to children in this community. And

40:55I thought that there was an opportunity to mend bridges and whether it was me involved or not, what I really wanted everyone at the hospital to know, especially on the ER staff, was to know the truth about what happened in this case. And so I wrote a letter to the CEO of Children's Hospital and I offered her to come in and meet with the staff at Children's Hospital Wisconsin, provide all the information we had about the case with the investigation uncovered, but also to answer questions that anyone had relative to the investigation and how things unfolded. And I never even got a response to the letter. John Cox's lies and Mike Hicks and Bos amplification of those lies had broken the trust between the ER and the child abuse team at Children's and cases were slipping through the cracks. Hicks and Bos had built his case on anonymous sources reporting vague unsubstantiated concerns about the child abuse team. But during the investigation, Matthew Torbinson heard from a source who had quite a different set of concerns. I got an anonymous letter

42:00from the hospital from a particular physician in the emergency department who was telling the exactly what was happening within the department regarding children who were being seen and probably were being abused or neglected. That's next time on the final episode of our Nobody Should Believe Me special report on John Cox. Nobody should believe me is executive produced written and hosted by me Andrea Dumlaugh. Our co-executive producer is Maria Gossett. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, Research and Fact Checking by Erin Ajay, additional research by Jess Aviv Randall. Our production manager is Nola Karmish, music from Blue Dot Sessions, Sound Snap and Slipstream.

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