South Florida couple who inspired child abuse law could lose children to adoption

A bill inspired by a South Florida family passed the Florida Legislature this year.

Its goal: help parents accused of child abuse who say their children have rare or misunderstood medical conditions. But the family behind it is still fighting their own battle.

They’ve spent years trying to get their children back — and despite support from lawmakers, they could soon lose them permanently to adoption.

Two cribs sit side by side in Tasha Patterson’s bedroom — untouched.

“I have not taken those cribs down,” Patterson said. “I told my husband it stays until they come home.”

The twins who were meant to sleep there will turn four this year.

It’s a painful reminder that Micah and Malachi haven’t lived at home since they were just weeks old.

“Sometimes I can’t stay here, and I have to go to my mother’s house,” she said while fighting back tears.

Patterson says the ordeal began shortly after her twins were born prematurely in July 2022.

“Both of them went to the NICU right away,” she said.

After they were released, Patterson — a nurse practitioner — said she and her husband sensed something wasn’t right.

“It was becoming where no matter what you would do, they were still fussy, and it would be like weird spurts of it,” she said.

During what she describes as a final ER visit, doctors discovered serious injuries, including fractured ribs and extremities.

“They did a scanning on him, and they found fractures from head to toe,” Patterson said. “Immediately, they said the children are not going to be going home.”

DCF INVESTIGATION

The Department of Children and Families launched an investigation and removed the twins, along with their older half-brother, from the home. 

A court then terminated the couple’s parental rights.

Patterson says she later learned she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a rare connective tissue disorder, along with another bone condition that can be passed on to children.

“This genetic mutation would have and could have essentially been the underlying cause of these injuries,” she said.

Medical records she shared show several doctors who reviewed the boys’ case disagreed with the state’s conclusion that the children had been abused.

One wrote that “the criteria required to support a diagnosis of abuse are not met,” and that the injuries are “best explained by an underlying genetic/connective tissue disorder, and not by inflicted injury.”

Patterson says the injuries continued even after the children were removed.

Another physician’s letter also described “new, additional, previously undiagnosed fractures” discovered after the twins left the home.

Patterson also took her fight to Tallahassee, urging lawmakers to pass legislation introduced by State Sen. Barbara Sharief.

“Today, medical research shows that certain injuries and symptoms once assumed to be abuse can have legitimate medical explanations,” Patterson said to lawmakers. 

The bill — now known as “Patterson’s Law” — requires the state to consult physicians experienced in conditions that can mimic child abuse, including EDS.

THE FIGHT IN COURT 

The bill passed this year. Despite that victory, Patterson and her husband remain separated from their children after years of fighting in court.

“The judge has been made aware via numerous pleadings that we are now up to I believe it’s a dozen doctors that say this was not abuse,” said their attorney, Valentina Villalobos. “She has only heard from two of them.”

A judge reopened the case but, according to Villalobos, limited the expert testimony allowed.

The couple was unable to regain parental rights.

An appeals court later upheld that decision, writing in its opinion that “trial evidence largely pointed toward non-accidental trauma” as the cause of the injuries and that “the trial court did not find the parents’ experts credible or reliable in conjunction with the other testimony and evidence in this case.”
“They are planning to have my children adopted on Friday,” Patterson said.

She says the Department of Children and Families is moving forward with plans for adoption by a relative who has been caring for the twins.

The couple’s third child remains in the custody of his biological mother, the father’s former partner.

‘IT’S A DAY OF GRIEF FOR ME‘

As many families prepare to celebrate Mother’s Day, Patterson says, for her, the day represents loss.

“It’s a day of grief for me. Mother’s Day, holidays, grief,” she said.

The couple is allowed supervised visits with the twins.

“When they have events at school, I can’t be there,” Patterson said, “They have Mother’s Day events, Father’s Day events. It’s my relatives that have to go to fill in. But they have a mom and dad.”

The couple has also been charged with child neglect causing bodily harm. The case is pending, and they have pleaded not guilty.

NBC6 reached out to the Department of Children and Families with questions, but the agency said information about investigations is confidential.

The Guardian Ad Litem Office in Broward County, which advocates for the children in the case, has not responded to a request for comment.