Harry Jaffe, The Examiner
2008-02-27 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Gregg and Julianna Caplan took their twin toddlers to “Music Together” yesterday morning, their regular session at Guy Mason Recreation Center on Wisconsin Avenue, north of Georgetown. They walked in with some trepidation. Their story had just gone public in newspapers and TV. They had recently testified before the City Council. They had been accused of abusing one of their daughters. Though they had been absolved medically and legally, they were still being dragged into bureaucratic hell by D.C.’s overzealous child welfare officials.

But as they walked into Guy Mason, parents approached. One said: “We’re so horrified this happened to you.” Another offered to donate money to a legal defense fund.

Julianna Caplan said thanks but no thanks.

“The city should pay these legal bills,” Caplan said.

Caplan and her husband, Gregg, welcomed me into their row home near Georgetown Hospital early yesterday afternoon. The twins were a bit fussy. Nap time loomed. They crawled around a front room filled with dolls and toys and play sets. Their baby sitter arrived. I looked at the scene and the three folks who care for the twins, and though I’m no expert, and abuse can happen in any home, I just couldn’t see it in this one.

Nor could the doctors who examined one of the twins a few days before Labor Day. Julianna had taken one of her 8-month-old twins to Children’s Hospital. The day before, Julianna had heard a thud and saw the toddler struggling to get up after a tumble. Gregg and Julianna started to worry when their child continued to throw up. Their pediatrician recommended a hospital visit.

The twin recovered in a day. But examining physicians discovered retinal hemorrhage — or bleeding behind the eye — that is a tripwire to shaken baby syndrome, which triggered the child abuse apparatus. The doctors said the bleeding was not caused by shaking; nevertheless, the system sunk its claws into the Caplans.

At 1 a.m. officials from the Child and Family Services Agency knocked on the Caplans’ door to take the other twin.

“Two excruciating weeks later,” Gregg testified, “a judge ruled that there are not reasonable grounds to believe our daughter was abused.”

The Caplans are back home and back together, but the city refuses to take their names off the child protection register, which leaves them tainted.

City leaders — from the mayor to the attorney general to child welfare chief Sharlynn Bobo — made it clear that the Caplans’ “privilege” would not shield them from the system. My reading of this sordid tale is that the Caplans were hounded because of their privileged status.

“I don’t think race is the issue,” Julianna tells me, “but privilege is. If we were a [well off] African-American family, the city would have done the same thing.”

The Caplan story is hardly the first time I have witnessed reverse discrimination. Lafayette Elementary School, with middle-class kids, always got the back of the school system’s hand.

It is a vindictiveness as ugly as any form of discrimination.