Now a Happy Ending

Child Removal Ruled Inadmissible: Baby James Is Home Again

For 19 days, the baby had to stay with a surrogate mother; as of Friday, the little boy is back with his parents.(Bild: Krone-Collage/zVg, privat)

For nearly three months, a 23-year-old mother from Lower Austria fought for her baby. For the second time, a judge ruled on the child’s removal—with a happy ending for the young family. A lawsuit seeking compensation for emotional distress is now expected to follow.

How many times can you hurt a young mother? The woman from Lower Austria had her baby taken away—and not just once. For nearly three months, the “Krone” has been reporting on this explosive case filled with despair and inexplicable events.

But let’s start from the beginning: Kathi, the young mother, suddenly found herself in the crosshairs of the authorities after she sought help from doctors. James (now 17 weeks old) wouldn’t drink. He refused both the breast and Aptamil. Because she was worried, the 23-year-old called an ambulance on that fateful hot day.

Since neither shaken baby syndrome nor any other condition could be diagnosed at the Mistelbach Clinic (Lower Austria) at the time, James was given a drug test. It came back positive—for cocaine. The second test came back negative. The one for the mother was negative; the second was suddenly positive.

First the mother-child shelter, then the removal of the child
“Krone” readers know what happened next: The youth welfare office of the Gänserndorf District Administration had to take action. The bureaucratic machinery kicked into gear. The woman from the Weinviertel region was taken with her infant to a mother-and-child shelter in Ansfelden, Upper Austria. Until a judge finally issued a ruling and brought the two back home to the family home with Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa.

But the case was far from over. On August 24, employees of the youth welfare office, accompanied by nearly a dozen police officers, stormed into the family home. Kathi’s desperate screams pierced to the bone. And James was gone.

The removal of the children from the family home: Kathi’s lawyers are filing a civil liability suit against those responsible.(Bild: zVg, Krone KREATIV)

SPÖ Provincial Councilor Remained Silent; District Administrator Spoke
The responsible SPÖ Provincial Councilor, Eva Prischl, declined to comment (“for the child’s well-being”). One day after the officially ordered removal of the child, the Korneuburg District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Kathi. Only then did the responsible district administrator, Claudia Pfeiler-Blach, give an interview to the “Krone” and explain why James had to be taken into state custody: “The infant had cocaine in his system—not administered through breast milk, but directly.”

From the very beginning, the young mother could not explain where it came from. The entire family voluntarily underwent drug testing multiple times—all results were negative! Yet James remained with a foster mother. Now the “Krone” has obtained the latest 19-page ruling from the same judge, who has, for the second time, dismantled the measures taken by Child and Youth Services. While she understands the agency’s actions, she noted that the burden of proof is so weak that James must be returned immediately.

This is because contradictions arose again during the second hearing: The child welfare workers who testified were dissatisfied with the 23-year-old, who had already suffered five miscarriages. She was described as “insecure” and “noticeable because she had so many questions about caring for her first (!) child.” Kathi’s midwife, on the other hand, described the mother as “loving toward James” and “completely cooperative.”

We will now file a claim for compensation for pain and suffering with the relevant authorities due to the severe trauma she suffered.

Elisabeth Thaler, Rechtsanwältin in der Kanzlei Manfred Arbacher-Stöger

Bild: arbacher.com

“A Scenario That Is, in Principle, Conceivable”: Contaminated Pacifier
In conclusion, the judge states: “The fact that this life-threatening condition for James occurred while he was in his mother’s care is not, however, sufficient—given the totality of the circumstances—to justify the emergency intervention, especially since it could not be explicitly established that she administered cocaine (...) The most likely scenario for contamination also explains the mother’s positive test result, as one need only consider the possibility that the mother unknowingly licked a contaminated pacifier and then put it in her son’s mouth—to name just one theoretically plausible scenario.” 

The judge sums up the entire ordeal in one sentence: “A long time in young James’s life.” The little boy was gone for 19 days. “I can’t put into words how I feel right now, holding my baby in my arms,” Kathi says today.