by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
As we look back on a very troubled 2025, one of the few bright spots from the year is that many Child Abuse Pediatricians (CAP) were exposed for their roles in child medical kidnapping cases in the corporate media.
I am also happy to report that a couple of the most highly profiled CAP doctors are no longer practicing here at the end of 2025, due to media exposure and lawsuits from the parents of their victims who were wrongly removed from their families.
While these doctors should be behind bars for the families they destroyed, at least a couple of them now have resigned in disgrace and no longer have jobs as Child Abuse Pediatricians, a job with a single purpose, to find parents who allegedly abuse their children.
If they cannot find parents who abuse their children in their community, then the entire rationale and reason for them to collect their paychecks goes away.
And thank God, a couple of them now are no longer collecting paychecks to falsely accuse parents of abusing their children.
Dr. Barbara Knox
Dr. Barbara Knox.
We first introduced Dr. Barbara Knox to the public in 2020, when she was head of the Child Protection Program at American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Child Abuse Pediatrician Loses Job After Complaints – Becomes Medical Director in Alaska for Child Abuse
Brenna and Joel Siebold are seen with their son, Leo, 2, at their home in Mount Horeb, WI. Image Source.
Brenna Siebold had just returned home from teaching third grade at Mount Horeb Intermediate Center. Her 9-month-old son, home with his sitter, was acting sluggish. She took Leo’s temperature: 103 degrees.
The fever was only the latest health scare in Leo’s short life. He was born with heterotaxy syndrome, in which the internal organs are abnormally arranged. He had already endured two surgeries, and doctors instructed the Siebolds, of Mount Horeb, to bring him to the emergency room any time he ran a fever above 100.4 degrees.
That day, Sept. 5, 2018, Brenna dropped off her older children, Jocelyn and Jonah, at her parents’ house. Her husband, Joel, was at work as a custodian at Glacier Creek Middle School in Cross Plains. Then she drove Leo to a familiar destination: American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison.
The visit was traumatic. Leo thrashed and screamed while ER staff and Siebold struggled to hold him down to insert a needle into his veins and poke a catheter into his groin. “There was blood all over the table,” Siebold recalled.
The following day, staff confronted the Siebolds about bruises found on Leo — bruises that Dr. Barbara Knox, head of the hospital’s Child Protection Program, flagged as possible signs of abuse.
The encounter sparked an investigation that threatened to rip apart the Siebold family and ruin their careers. Surgical scars on Leo were listed as bruises. Demonstrably false information was inserted into his medical record.
And Knox allegedly misrepresented herself as a specialist in an attempt to convince the family to approve additional medical testing.
Police instantly dismissed the abuse allegation.
Child welfare officials would clear the couple after two months. But the episode left Brenna Siebold “petrified” of seeking emergency medical care for their children, including twins, Hazelle and Hank, born in December.
Now Knox — considered a national expert on child abuse who testifies as an expert for prosecutors around the country — is under the microscope.
The University of Wisconsin placed her on paid leave in mid-2019 after colleagues inside and outside of the hospital accused her of intimidation or retaliation, an internal letter shows.
Knox now works as the medical director of Alaska CARES, a child abuse response and evaluation program based at the Children’s Hospital at Providence in Anchorage.
(Source.)
Knox’s career in Alaska as a CAP did not last long either, and in 2022 she resigned, allegedly due to “numerous complaints about her management and medical judgment“.
She then moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where she worked as the division chief of the University of Florida Health Jacksonville Child Protective Team (CPT).
In 2023 she worked on a high profile case where parents from Georgia lost custody of their young children for 19 months before they were reunited after false claims of child abuse.
After an investigation in Florida, Knox was forced to resign in August of this year (2025), and as far as I can tell remains unemployed.
Internal investigation says controversial child abuse pediatrician was found to violate UF policy
The report says employees of Dr. Barbara Knox often quit due to their work environment. One said employees feared having their lives made “a living hell.”
Excerpts:
A newly-released University of Florida internal investigative report reveals accusations of mistreatment and misconduct at the hands of child abuse pediatrician Dr. Barbara Knox, the doctor who worked on the high-profile Sullivan case.
The report includes accusations from employees of an “insidious kind of harassment” and an environment where employees feared “having their lives made a ‘living hell.'”
The Sullivans, from Camden County, Georgia, lost custody of their three children for a year and a half after their baby was evaluated by Knox and they were accused of child abuse, while they said the child’s injuries were caused by a medical condition.
After a long battle, they have since regained custody of their children. (You can read more about the Sullivan case here.)
Knox served as the division chief of the UF Health Jacksonville Child Protective Team (CPT). After the Sullivan case made headlines, nine employees of Knox’s CPT team, spoke to First Coast News, coming forward about their experiences working with her. The employees told us they were suffering from working in a toxic environment.
UF confirmed Thursday that Knox has announced her resignation, effective in August.
Propublica Does an About Face on Child Abuse Pediatricians and Starts Exposing them Rather than Supporting Them
The national non-profit Propublica picked up the story of Dr. Barbara Knox and other Child Abuse Pediatricians (CAP) this past summer (2025).
This was a complete 180 degree turn from previous years, when Propublica ran attack pieces on doctors who opposed CAPs in the past, doctors testifying in court for the parents wrongly accused as child abusers, by showing much of the junk science behind “Shaken Baby Syndrome.”
Dr. David Ayoub, whom we have featured many times over the years here at Health Impact News and MedicalKidnap.com, along with other doctors who advocated for parents falsely accused of child abuse, were attacked by Propublica back in 2018. See:
An Anti-Vaxxer’s New Crusade
Doctors Defending Convicted Child Abuser “Exceed the Limits of Credulity,” Judge Rules
Dr. Nancy Harper. Image source.
Here in 2025, however, Propublica ran two in depth investigative reports on CAPs, and they centered around Dr. Nancy Harper, one of the most famous and well-known Child Abuse Pediatricians.
Two weeks ago, a federal lawsuit was filed against Dr. Nancy Harper by another pediatrician from the University of Minnesota, perhaps at least partially resulting from the Propublica articles published this past summer.
From the CourtHouse News Service:
Doctor says University of Minnesota fired him for uncovering child abuse prosecution scheme
Dr. Bazak Sharon accuses the university of inflating child abuse diagnoses by encouraging the manipulation of medical evidence that might have proved the innocence of parents and caregivers — all to secure lucrative grants.
A former University of Minnesota pediatrician filed a federal lawsuit against the university, its associated medical groups and several doctors on Friday, claiming his June 2023 termination was retaliation for exposing a fraudulent scheme to maximize child abuse prosecutions.
Dr. Bazak Sharon accuses the defendants — including the University of Minnesota’s governing board and child abuse specialist Dr. Nancy Sanders Harper, among others — of civil rights violations and racketeering.
Sharon, who served at the university for 17 years, says the scheme was intended to maximize the identification and prosecution of child abuse cases to secure funding and increase the prestige of the university’s child abuse fellowship program.
The policies designed to increase child abuse diagnoses, according to Sharon, include forcing transfers of sick or injured babies to a forensic child abuse pediatrician — even if that pediatrician was not trained to treat the relevant illness — and encouraging the manipulation of medical evidence that might have proved the innocence of parents and caregivers.
Sharon claims his conflict with the child abuse team began in 2022 when he showed disagreement with the handling of a 3-month-old baby, suggesting other causes of the baby’s head trauma rather than abuse. He says he was told by others at the university that the differences in opinions would complicate the situation, and he was then removed from the child’s care team.
Sharon claims he attempted to report this and other activity to senior leadership under the expectation that it would put an end to the scheme. Instead, the doctor asserts that the money and prestige brought to the university by Harper and her team were so important that they chose to silence him.
Sharon highlights a $23 million child abuse grant created in 2015 where a portion of the funds distributed to Minnesota counties is based on the number of open child abuse cases.
In 2016, two years after Harper arrived at the university, Sharon contends more than 5,700 children in Hennepin County were reported as victims of physical abuse, an increase of 228% over the previous eight-year average.
The two Propublica articles, published 6 months before this lawsuit was filed, give even more details about Dr. Nancy Harper, as well as Dr. Barbara Knox and Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen. See:
A Doctor Challenged the Opinion of a Powerful Child Abuse Specialist. Then He Lost His Job.
This Doctor Specializes in Diagnosing Child Abuse. Some of Her Conclusions Have Been Called Into Question.
Here is more information about Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, that was just published within the past week, which, again, may very well be another result of the Propublica articles published 6 months ago.
Dozens of parents are suing Lehigh Valley child abuse doctor at center of new Serial podcast
Excerpts:
Just how much damage can a doctor’s word do?
For some parents in the Lehigh Valley, an allegation of abuse by the region’s former top child abuse pediatrician meant time lost with their children, lost money, lost jobs, lost homes and even prison time.
That doctor, Debra Esernio-Jenssen, is the former medical director of the now-shuttered John Van Brakle Child Advocacy Center at Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital.
The families who filed the lawsuits — all of whom were accused of child abuse by Esernio-Jenssen — paint the doctor as overzealous at best, diagnosing abuse when none occurred.
The controversy surrounding Esernio-Jenssen led the Lehigh County district attorney’s office to take the rare step this year of vacating the sentence of an Allentown man convicted in 2017 of murdering his infant daughter.
The DA’s office said it reexamined Esernio-Jenssen’s testimony in the case, and determined that what the doctor said during the trial went “far beyond” what was in a report on the child’s death.
It was the first time a law enforcement body in the Lehigh Valley that had relied on Esernio-Jenssen’s credibility publicly stated that her word didn’t carry much weight.
The lawsuits, which name Esernio-Jenssen and her former employer, Lehigh Valley Health Network, say she or her subordinates at the network falsely accused the parents of child abuse, in some cases leading to children being removed from their families for months or more than a year.
Combined, these families are seeking hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in damages.
Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen was also featured in an investigation by another corporate media giant: The New York Times.
In ‘The Preventionist,’ the Right Way to Protect Children Isn’t So Clear
After a series of allegations about misdiagnosed child abuse in Pennsylvania, a three-part podcast by Serial Productions brings families’ stories to light.
In the Propublica article, Dr. Bazak Sharon, who filed the federal lawsuit against Dr. Nancy Harper earlier this month, discusses how powerful this group of CAPs are.
Sharon also learned that the subspecialty of child abuse pediatrics itself has also been under increasing scrutiny.
Perhaps the most famous child abuse pediatrician case became the basis for the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” in which a 10-year-old girl’s pain syndrome was diagnosed by a child abuse pediatrician as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
A jury found the hospital liable for medical malpractice and awarded the family over $200 million; the hospital has appealed.
Several families are suing a Pennsylvania hospital for what they say are false diagnoses of abuse by Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, who led its child abuse team.
A series of allegations of overzealous diagnoses of abuse have followed Dr. Barbara Knox from her job leading a child abuse team at the University of Wisconsin to similar positions in Alaska and at the University of Florida.
The child abuse pediatrician community is tightknit. After Knox left Wisconsin, Harper replaced her as an expert witness in some criminal cases. Esernio-Jenssen wrote Harper a nomination letter for a Ray E. Helfer Society award, calling her “an unstoppable force.” (Full article.)
I don’t know if Dr. Sharon is familiar with the work we have published at MedicalKidnap.com for over ten years now exposing these CAPs, but in 2018 we published a report on the Ray E. Helfer Society who funds most of these CAPs:
Elite Medical Doctors Seek to Control the Media and Public’s Perception of Child Abuse Specialists
Excerpts:
Many of the Child Abuse Pediatricians who play a role in Medical Kidnap stories are a part of the Ray E. Helfer Society, which is an elite group of doctors in the child abuse field.
According to the Helfer Society’s website, one of their goals is to educate the media and the “lay public” as they testify against parents whom they have accused of child abuse.
In the section on “Public Relations and Media Literacy Training,” they write:
Child abuse physicians have always talked to the lay public. Testimony to judges and juries is a regular part of CAP practice, and physicians have been called upon to talk to the press about high profile cases and prevention agendas.
There are many doctors, including top medical experts in their respective fields, who disagree with the conclusions of the Child Abuse Pediatricians.
The Helfer Society actively seeks to discredit these doctors who dispute their interpretations of the data.
This article on the Helfer Society is also a chapter in our free online book about Child Abuse Pediatricians that has been used by doctors and lawyers in CAP cases over the years:
There are many thousands of copies of this book in circulation now, and while a national publication like Propublica or the New York Times would probably never give credit to us, we were covering these topics almost a decade before these big corporate media sites were, and you can have the same information.
The Helfer Society publicly publishes a list of their “fellowships” in each State that receives funding for CAPs, as well as the names of the hospitals and the head CAPs who medically kidnap children and bring false accusations against their parents, destroying families.
Here is the list. Share it far and wide and warn parents to stay clear of these hospitals and doctor child kidnappers!
| Program Name | Program Director | CAP Fellowship Positions Available for 2026 Through NRMP/ERAS | Pediatric Emergency Medicine-CAP positions Available for 2026 Through NRMP/ERAS | ACGME Accreditation Status (Accredited; Pending Accreditation) | |
| blank = unsure of status | blank – unsure of status | ||||
| Arkansa | |||||
| Arkansa Children’s Hospital | Liza Murray, MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| California | |||||
| Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Fellowship in Child Abuse Pediatrics | Carol Berkowitz, MD Melissa Jimenez, MD |
1 | 1 | Accredited | |
| Loma Linda University Hospital | Amy Snodgrass-Young, MD Melissa Siccama, MD |
1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| University of California San Diego/Chadwick Center at Rady Children’s Hospital | Natalie Laub MD Shalon Nienow, MD |
1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Colorado | |||||
| Children’s Hospital Colarado and The Kempe Center | Curtis “Rashaan” Ford , MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Florida | |||||
| University of Florida College of Medicine Jacksonville Program | Randell Alexander, MD Barbara Knox, MD |
0 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Georgia | |||||
| Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory School of Medicine | Emmanuel Pena, DO | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Illinois | |||||
| Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago | Norell Rosado, MD Annie Torres |
2 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Indiana | |||||
| Indiana University School of Medicine / Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis | Marissa Luoma, MD MS | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Kentucky | |||||
| University of Kentucky | Kelsey Gregory, MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| University of Louisville | Melissa Currie, MD | 0 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Minnesota | |||||
| University of Minnesota | Nancy Harper, MD Nicole Johnson MD | 0 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Missouri | |||||
| St. Louis Children’s Hospital | Adrienne Atzemis, MD | 1 | 1 | Accredited | |
| Children’s Mercy Hospital Kansas City | Mary Moffatt, MD | 1 | unsure | Accredited | |
| New Jersey | |||||
| CARES Institute at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University/Cooper University Health Care | Rachel Silliman Cohen, MD, FAAP | 0 | 0 | Accredited | |
| New Mexico | |||||
| University of New Mexico Fellowship in Child Abuse Pediatrics | Rebecca Girardet, MD Leslie Stricker MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| New York | |||||
| Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn/Infants and Children’s Hospital of Brooklyn Program | Ingrid Walker-Descartes, MD | Accredited | |||
| Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital/McMahon Ryan Child Advocacy Center | Alicia Pekarsky, MD Ann Botash, MD |
1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| North Carolina | |||||
| Duke University Medical Center | Lindsay Terrell, MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Ohio | |||||
| Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center | Kathi Makoroff, MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Ohio State University College of Medicine | Megan Letson, MD Kristin Crichton DO | 1 | 1 | Accredited | |
| Oklahoma | |||||
| University of Oklahoma Department of Pediatrics | Michael Baxter, DO | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Pennsylvania | |||||
| Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia | Kristine Fortin, MD | 2 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Penn State Hershey Medical Center | Lori Frasier, MD | Accredited | |||
| UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh | Michelle Clayton, MD, MPH | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Rhode Island | Brett Slingsby, MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Hasbro Children’s Hospital/Brown Alpert Medical School | |||||
| South Carolina | |||||
| Medical University of South Carolina | Deana Lashley, DO | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Texas | |||||
| University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio | Natalie Kissoon, MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Texas Children’s Hospital/ Baylor College of Medicine | Dhvani Shanghvi MD Med | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| The University of Texas Medical School at Houston Division of Child Protection Pediatrics | Simi Abraham MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| University of Texas Southwestern | Suzanne Dakil, MD | 1 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Utah | |||||
| The University of Utah Department of Pediatrics | Antoinette Laskey, MD, MPH | 0 | 0 | Accredited | |
| Virginia | |||||
| Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters | Accredited | ||||
| Washington | |||||
| University of Washington Seattle Children’s Hospital | Becky Wiester, MD | 1 | 1 | Accredited | |
| Wisconsin | |||||
| Medical College of Wisconsin Affiliated Hospitals | Angela Rabbitt, DO Rachel Segal, MD |
1 | 1 | Accredited | |
I know that the articles I write and that we publish at Health Impact News can be very negative as we attempt to shine the light of the truth into very dark, and evil topics.
But this national exposure on the evil CAP kidnappers is a very positive story for 2025! It shows the power of the press, when the press is committed to the truth.
It is not enough, of course, as this entire system of child trafficking and medical kidnapping needs to be shut down. This country is operated by the Jeffrey Epstein financial system, and the pedophiles who run it.
May we see more victories like this in 2026, and more hope for the countless victims who have suffered from the Satanic medical system, and the Satanic child trafficking system through the government child welfare programs.
This article was written by Human Superior Intelligence (HSI)
See Also:
Understand the Times We are Currently Living Through
The Demonic Roots of Christianity: The Christians Jesus Said He Hated
Who are God’s “Chosen People”?
Life in the Spirit versus the Religious Life in the Flesh
KABBALAH: The Anti-Christ Religion of Satan that Controls the World Today
Christian Teaching on Sex and Marriage vs. The Actual Biblical Teaching
Exposing the Christian Zionism Cult
The Bewitching of America with the Evil Eye and the Mark of the Beast
Jesus Christ’s Opposition to the Jewish State: Lessons for Today
Identifying the Luciferian Globalists Implementing the New World Order – Who are the “Jews”?
The Brain Myth: Your Intellect and Thoughts Originate in Your Heart, Not Your Brain
The Seal and Mark of God is Far More Important than the “Mark of the Beast” – Are You Prepared for What’s Coming?
The Satanic Roots to Modern Medicine – The Image of the Beast?
Medicine: Idolatry in the Twenty First Century – 10-Year-Old Article More Relevant Today than the Day it was Written
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