Placed in a Home

Cocaine Drama Involving a Mother and Child: Shocking Twist!

Finally reunited: After Kathi (23) was accused of using cocaine, the hair test results are now in.(Bild: zVg, Krone KREATIV)

A young mother in Lower Austria was accused of drug use; authorities placed the 23-year-old and her young son in a shelter—as reported by the “Krone.” Now, a shocking expert report has been released.

“We’ll bring you back home.” That was the promise Kathi’s family made on July 3 at 7:15 a.m., when she was “taken away” by child welfare services from her family home in Gänserndorf (Lower Austria) along with her then six-week-old baby. Twenty-two days later, Matthias, James’s father, kept that promise. He and attorneys Elisabeth Thaler and Manfred Arbacher-Stöger retrieved the 23-year-old and her little boy from the mother-child shelter in Ansfelden (Upper Austria).

What had happened before? As reported, the pair were taken away for an “assessment of the risk to the child’s welfare” after the baby and his mother tested positive for cocaine at the Mistelbach Clinic.

“Never gave drugs a second thought”
It was an odyssey: rapid tests came back positive one time, then negative, and vice versa. A lab test then provided “certainty” from the perspective of the doctors, authorities, police, and the district attorney’s office. Cocaine was detected in Kathi and James’s systems, even though the young mother (who has already suffered five miscarriages) consistently denied ever having had anything to do with drugs. “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. I’ve never given drugs a second thought.”

Nevertheless, she agreed to move into the shelter with her child. “My client only signed the document because she was led to believe that otherwise her baby would be taken away from her,” explains Arbacher-Stöger.

Audio recordings of a conversation that the young mother—holding her baby—was forced to endure alone with two child welfare workers and a police officer are in the possession of the “Krone”—as are the results of the hair test for drugs. Result for all substances:NEGATIVE!

The negative result of the young mother’s hair test(Bild: zVg)

“Risk Now Ruled Out”
 “A risk to the child’s welfare posed by our client due to substance abuse hasnowbeen ruled out,”legal counsel Arbacher-Stöger told the “Krone.”