Dan Schrock, the author of Journey With “Justice”: Our Family’s Experience With “Shaken Baby” Allegations, is a gentler spirit in person than he is on the printed page. He has even found a message of hope in his daughter’s conviction for an infant shaking he is sure never happened.
“The temptation is to say ‘the police did this’ and ‘the prosecutor did that,'” he concedes, “But behind all this is a society that loves children and is willing to do anything to protect them.” Even the investigators who amplified his family’s pain by lying to potential witnesses, he argues, were only trying to hold someone accountable for his granddaughter’s catastrophic collapse.
Natalia Benson was three months old in July, 2005, the morning she wakened her mother, Barb Schrock, at 3 am with a high-pitched scream, followed by breathing problems and a call to 911. Within two days, Natalia had become a ward of the state, diagnosed as a shaken baby, and Barb was the only suspect.
Barbara Schrock in prison, 2011
Like so many infants in these circumstances, Natalia came into the world in fragile health. She weighed 3 pounds 11 ounces at birth, after a labor induced at 34 weeks due to her mother’s soaring blood pressure. She spent her first three weeks of life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and she still weighed only 6 pounds when 3 months old. Barb had called the doctor’s office the previous day, concerned that the baby seemed not herself, and had made an appointment for that morning, a few hours after the girl’s collapse. A month earlier, she had taken Natalia to an after-hours clinic because her breathing didn’t seem right: At that time the infant was diagnosed with a sinus infection and put on antibiotics.
Despite Natalia’s complex medical history and lack of bruising or abrasions, the pattern of bleeding and swelling found inside her skull convinced the doctors that the girl had been shaken. Oddly enough, the doctors also agreed that she had suffered a more serious brain injury weeks earlier, although that didn’t seem to interfere with the assumption that she had been violently assaulted immediately before her collapse.
Dan Schrock’s main achievement in Journey is his careful tracking of the evolving case against his daughter: Early in the story, he transcribes the initial police interviews with family members, and he carries his thorough knowledge of these transcripts through the narration. His book illustrates clearly how misinformation, propagated early on by police trying to corner their suspect, confused the facts and tainted both the investigation and the trials. He also compares the medical testimony from different doctors, revealing how the physicians could reach different conclusions from the same scans and records, but still return to their unanimous confidence that the last caretaker with the child before her collapse was guilty of assault.
Journey With “Justice” is not a light read: It is Dan Schrock’s from-the-heart protest against the murky thinking and questionable tactics that condemned his daughter to lose both her family and her liberty. He and his wife have also been denied any visitation with their surviving granddaughter, at the instigation of the girl’s father and his family. “They believe her mother killed her sister,” Schrock sighs, “And they don’t want our side of the family in her life.”
He told me he wrote Journey so that his granddaughter would some day have a record of what really happened, and as a testament to the support his family received from their church community. In that he has succeeded. Especially when he talks about the case in retrospect, now that he has the leisure of hindsight, he is a living testament to the value of faith. His indignation comes through, and his love for his daughter, but I found no bitterness in his message.
Barb Schrock should be getting out of prison in the next few months. It is comforting to know that she will have an accepting family and community to help her move forward when this phase of her ordeal is over.
Update: Barbara Schrock was released from prison in early summer, 2014.
If you are not familiar with the debate surrounding shaken baby syndrome, please see the home page of this blog site.
copyright 2014, Sue Luttner
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Hey I just had an idea it might be stupid but talking about the babies who have no signs of abuse except the “triad” would it be worth to perform whole human genome sequencing to see if there is any pattern and changes in dna?
I think that is quite a reasonable idea. There is lots and lots of research that needs to be done.
An extraordinary number of infants diagnosed as shaken were born prematurely, often with breathing problems at birth. I have heard many speakers explain that preemies are harder to take care of and harder to bond with than full-term infants, as the prosecutors argued in the Schrock case, but I think there is probably something biological going on with the immature systems.
There is also ample evidence that a handful of rare but known disorders can also cause the triad.
Sue Luttner, thank you for the summary. I am about half-way through
“Journey With Justice” and am amazed at the story. I have a family member involved in a similar injustice and appreciate the awareness this story brings to the subject of wrongful convictions. Thank you,
Tom Burns
Thank you for a wonderful summary of this book. I have purchased it and will be reading it as soon as time allows.