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Hospital operated baby stealing ring in 50s 60s attorney - NY Daily News
Zella Jackson Price poses for a photo at her attorney’s office in Clayton, Mo. Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital now wonder if the infants were taken away by hospital officials to be raised by other families. The suspicions arose from the story of Price, who was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital and was told hours later that her daughter had died.
The stories are scarily similar – and may expose a long-hidden secret.
Over a span of three decades, baby after baby, born to poor, young black women, was declared dead at a segregated St. Louis hospital.
At least one, the now 49-year-old Melanie Gilmore, was not dead. And at least 18 other moms, or their surviving kin, think they were lied to as well.
A federal human trafficking analyst is headed to Missouri to investigate claims of a “scheme to steal babies in a systematic and organized fashion for nefarious purposes” at the now-shuttered Homer G. Phillips hospital, attorney Albert Watkins said.
“It’s so dark, it’s hard to imagine,” Watkins, of Kodner Watkins, LC, told the Daily News on Friday. “We owe it to permit them (the mothers) in the waning years of their lives to have some sense of closure.”
Dating back to 1941, these women, often single black moms between the ages of 15 and 21, gave birth to babies, often prematurely, at the hospital, which opened in 1937 to serve the city’s black population.
All of the accusers have provided information that links the cases, Watkins said, some of which has not been released publicly.
The women, now elderly, have each said they were told by a nurse – not a doctor, as was protocol – that their infant had died. None was given a death certificate and none was allowed to see the bodies.
“With the doctors, medical staff, this was a different time and culture – there was no questioning authority,” Andrew Weigley, an attorney at Kodner Watkins, told the News. “If they said the baby died, the baby died.”
Phillips was desegregated, in name only, in 1955. It closed in 1979.
But while it operated, “something very dark was going on in North St. Louis at Homer G. Phillips in the 50s and 60s,” Watkins said. The operation he detailed would have involved “a number of actors who were behaving in concert with each other to get this done,” from doctors and nurses to people in the foster care system, he said.
And there may be many more victims, across the country. Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Ore., reunited with her birth mother, Zella Jackson Price, in the St. Louis suburb of Olivette last month.
More at the link..
That shit is terrible and I want to say unbelievable but I know my history
Zella Jackson Price poses for a photo at her attorney’s office in Clayton, Mo. Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital now wonder if the infants were taken away by hospital officials to be raised by other families. The suspicions arose from the story of Price, who was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital and was told hours later that her daughter had died.
The stories are scarily similar – and may expose a long-hidden secret.
Over a span of three decades, baby after baby, born to poor, young black women, was declared dead at a segregated St. Louis hospital.
At least one, the now 49-year-old Melanie Gilmore, was not dead. And at least 18 other moms, or their surviving kin, think they were lied to as well.
A federal human trafficking analyst is headed to Missouri to investigate claims of a “scheme to steal babies in a systematic and organized fashion for nefarious purposes” at the now-shuttered Homer G. Phillips hospital, attorney Albert Watkins said.
“It’s so dark, it’s hard to imagine,” Watkins, of Kodner Watkins, LC, told the Daily News on Friday. “We owe it to permit them (the mothers) in the waning years of their lives to have some sense of closure.”
Dating back to 1941, these women, often single black moms between the ages of 15 and 21, gave birth to babies, often prematurely, at the hospital, which opened in 1937 to serve the city’s black population.
All of the accusers have provided information that links the cases, Watkins said, some of which has not been released publicly.
The women, now elderly, have each said they were told by a nurse – not a doctor, as was protocol – that their infant had died. None was given a death certificate and none was allowed to see the bodies.
“With the doctors, medical staff, this was a different time and culture – there was no questioning authority,” Andrew Weigley, an attorney at Kodner Watkins, told the News. “If they said the baby died, the baby died.”
Phillips was desegregated, in name only, in 1955. It closed in 1979.
But while it operated, “something very dark was going on in North St. Louis at Homer G. Phillips in the 50s and 60s,” Watkins said. The operation he detailed would have involved “a number of actors who were behaving in concert with each other to get this done,” from doctors and nurses to people in the foster care system, he said.
And there may be many more victims, across the country. Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Ore., reunited with her birth mother, Zella Jackson Price, in the St. Louis suburb of Olivette last month.
More at the link..
That shit is terrible and I want to say unbelievable but I know my history
