On Tuesday in a Douglas County, Colorado, courthouse, the state’s prosecutor, Gary Dawson, who hopes to put single mom Cynthia Abcug in jail for “exaggerating her son’s medical condition” (or “medical child abuse”) to various people like teachers and school nurses, put expert witness Dr. Jessica Panks on the stand. Panks is a “child abuse” doctor who works at the Kempe Center, which is connected to the Children’s Hospital in Colorado. Her job consists of writing reports on parents about whom doctors and social workers have child abuse concerns and to review files of children they think might be abused.
During direct questioning, Dr. Panks said the child only suffered one abnormal EEG (a brain test looking for seizure activity) and the rest were “stone-cold normal.” She also claimed that his mother, Abcug, frequently misrepresented the child’s symptoms and that no one witnessed any seizures but the mother.
On cross examination, the defense attorney, Ara Ohanian, made Dr. Panks go over every medical record in the child’s file from two months after he was born. In them, Panks was forced to reveal he had six abnormal EEGs and not just one as she had claimed earlier in the day.
“In the beginning of your testimony you had said [redacted] had one abnormal EEG in his life and to use your words you said the rest were ‘stone-cold normal,'” said Ohanian.
“Yes, I did say that,” said Panks, who then tried to claim that although they were technically abnormal, the fact that they didn’t show any seizures and no diagnosis could be made meant they weren’t significant. Panks never evaluated the child herself. All of the tests were ordered by highly respected neurologists who were caring for him.
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“But that’s your expert opinion that Abcug medically abused her child because there were was one abnormal EEG and every other one was ‘stone-cold normal,'” said Ohanian, again holding her to the fire. “We are at six EEGs that are abnormal! That’s what mom is hearing. Your kid has six abnormal EEGs!”
Panks shrugged her shoulders and replied snarkily, “That’s part of the information.” She did not explain why she attempted to lead the jury to believe the child had only had one abnormal EEG.
Abcug has been telling the media for years that the people who took her son couldn’t have looked at his actual medical records seriously and come up with their theory that he is perfectly well and in fact “living his best life” (as Panks said on the stand) separated from his mother. Records show Abcug followed all advice doctors gave her for her son’s entire life until Colorado DHS took him away from her and accused her of “child abuse.”
It wasn’t just the abnormal EEGs. The child also took neurological testing that showed low cognitive function, and the doctor recommended several different kinds of therapy including occupational and physical. He was given genetic testing that showed a GAMT gene deficiency, which Panks admitted that doctors don’t know much about. “We don’t know what it means yet.” But just hours earlier, Panks claimed vociferously that the child is thriving and perfectly well! She never mentioned a gene deficiency, low cognitive abilities, and doctor-ordered therapies including in-home visits.
Panks also claimed that Abcug subjected the child to a lumbar puncture unnecessarily. But records showed that Abcug is on the record with both Dr. Wong and Dr. Collins objecting to a lumbar puncture procedure. Panks claimed that a lumbar puncture is dangerous and risky and regaled the jury with scary-sounding side effects that I can’t spell. When shown Dr. Collins’ answer to Abcug that contradicts that description, likening a lumbar puncture to most other blood tests, Panks confused the room by attempting to tell the jury she didn’t just say it was dangerous. “Yes, that’s what I described,” she said with a straight face.
The number of physician-diagnosed maladies was too many for me to type fast enough to catch them all–that’s how many there were. The prosecution’s witnesses included teachers, a principal, and a physical therapist who all said they didn’t see actual seizures and believed Abcug was exaggerating her son’s medical condition. Yet, his medical records don’t tell that story no matter how many witnesses they bring forward who claim otherwise.
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Every diagnosis the child was given was from a highly respected doctor, including some of the top neurologists in the country. Every therapy he was referred to came from the same doctors. And his mother followed every direction, including the ones she felt fearful of like the lumbar punctures and placing him on Topamax, which affected the child negatively.
The smug way that Panks sat on the stand and cheerfully chirped about how she believes Abcug is an abuser—while she was caught several times misrepresenting the child’s medical records and Abcug’s actions— is hard to take. It’s hard to tell if she’s incompetent or malicious or a little bit of both.
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