A Sevillian woman, Sara Casas, asked again this Tuesday that her disabled son be returned to her, with a protest that she carried out at the door of the Family Courts. A year ago, the custody of her son Emilio, who is now 8 years old, was withdrawn from Casas, due to suspicion of possible mistreatment, which she assures that she has been able to deny with various medical and forensic reports.
This woman has already chained herself up at the Virgen del Rocio Hospital so that they would let her see her son and provide her with information about the operation to which he underwent. This Tuesday he repeated his protest in the courts, where he had the help of the president of the National Association of Minors in Guardianship, Jose Maldonado.
“I was a child in care. In 2008 I lost custody of my three oldest children. Then, in August 2020, I lost custody of this other child, despite the fact that the doctors gave him three years to live and the child was seven” , Casas explained, detailing that during those seven years he learned to operate machines to make his son’s life easier and to practice maneuvers that could save his life.
The minor suffers from several ailments, including a brain malformation that causes paralysis, a brain disease called polymicrogyria and another of the jaw called Pierre Robin syndrome. He also suffers from chronic lung disease. “It is a multi-organ affectation and he needs care 24 hours a day, which I have given him for seven years,” said the mother.
“I took him on August 20 with a respiratory infection. He was given some drops there that are a sedative, but that are contraindicated for children with these problems. 48 hours after admission he stopped breathing, did not urinate and everything became alarmed the world. They administered it to him in the hospital, not me,” says Casas. “I told the pediatrician that it could be the drops and that she repeat the analysis, to which they refused.”
According to the woman, this situation caused the hospital to put her on suspicion of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness in which the person suffering from it invents symptoms or provokes them in the child they care for so that it seems that he is sick. . The minor also tested positive for antidepressants.
“In 48 hours the police came and took the child. That was on August 28, 2020.” Casas explains that her son was withdrawn because she was a child under guardianship, in addition to the suspicion of abuse and the positive for antidepressants. “Other than that, we were told that the child had unnecessary income.” However, she points out that the minor has continued to have hospital admissions despite the fact that he is in a special center for children with disabilities.
Casas sees his son for an hour every fortnight. He says that he has several reports from specialists that rule out any mental illness in her, so he understands that he should get back together with her son. “I want Justice to be done, that no other person go through this again and that, if there is suspicion of a syndrome of this type, the child be removed after the mother is evaluated by a psychiatrist and not before.”
The woman adds that she has resources and help from family and associations to be able to take care of the child. “I have always sought my life” her older children were taken from her because she lived with them in an abandoned ship. She currently sees them also once every fortnight. They are two 16-year-old twins and another 15-year-old son.
The president of the National Association of Protected Minors, Jose Maldonado, assured that he has been supporting Sara Casas since minute one and recalled a meeting with the state attorney general, whom he asked that the matter of protected minors “return to Justice , because they have left it in the hands of the administration”. In this way, “the trial takes two years and during those first two years, the children are in child protection centers.”
“Sara has been a child in care, and from experience we know that the girls who are in care are followed up once they reach the age of majority and they put them on the street, because the money they collect from European funds is no longer there. 90% of these children, who have no preparation or education, are on the street and have no contact with their biological families,” Maldonado said.
