Two parents are suing state and local officials in Massachusetts in federal court for heavy-handed treatment during a bungled investigation into allegations of child abuse that were later discredited.
The plight of the family received national attention in December 2022 when The Washington Post and Reason magazine told their tale. The family is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a not-for-profit national public interest law firm that challenges governmental overreach.
Although the government should work to prevent child abuse and remove at-risk children from truly abusive homes, it is required to adhere to its lawful obligations so that all individuals can feel secure in their homes, property, and persons, according to PLF.
The case goes back to July 2022, when graduate student Sarah Perkins brought her 3-month-old son, Cal, to a hospital emergency room a few miles from the family home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Cal’s temperature was 103 degrees at the time. Perkins’s husband, Josh Sabey, a documentary filmmaker, stayed at home with the couple’s toddler, Clarence.
At the hospital an X-ray was taken of Cal to check for pneumonia. The examination revealed a weeks-old healed fracture on one of the baby’s ribs. Hospital staff alerted the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF), which promptly began a child abuse investigation. Perkins, who was unaware of the cause of the injury, was interrogated by a social worker. Sabey brought Clarence to the hospital and was also interrogated. Eventually the family was allowed to leave knowing they would have to check in with DCF in a few days.
But the next night at about 1 a.m., DCF workers accompanied by Waltham police officers knocked on the family’s door. The police lacked a warrant or court order but were determined to remove the children from the family home. The parents objected and Clarence started screaming but the police seized the children and placed them with a foster mother.
Within 24 hours, Sabey’s parents were able to assume custody of their grandchildren and four weeks later, after a hearing, Sabey and Perkins received permission to take their children home while DCF continued its investigation. Three months later full custody of the children was restored to Sabey and Perkins and the case against them was dismissed. The baby’s fracture was believed to have taken place when his grandmother put him in a car seat.
In the legal complaint (pdf) in the case, Sabey v. Butterfield, court file 1:23-cv-10957, filed last week in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, the family claims that the actions taken by officials “were reprehensible and plainly unconstitutional.” The family has since moved out of Massachusetts.
“The officials had no warrant to enter the Sabeys’ home or seize the young Sabey children, and there was no plausible imminent threat that could justify entering the home and seizing the sleeping toddler and infant from their loving parents and family home in the middle of the night,” the complaint states.
Although “the warrantless entry into the home and the seizure of the Sabey children justifiably produced domestic and international outrage … neither DCF nor the [Waltham Police Department] have offered any tenable justification, excuse, or apology for their lawless actions.”
Although the parents were ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing and their children were returned to them, “nothing can undo the trauma of that early July morning and the prolonged abrogation of the Sabeys’ parental rights.”
Joshua Thompson, PLF’s director of legal operations, said the family is suing to vindicate their constitutional rights.
The police violated their Fourth Amendment protection against searches when they came into their home without a warrant, Thompson told The Epoch Times in an interview.
“There’s a reason why the law treats the home differently. It’s a sanctuary and cops cannot break that seal on the front doors or threaten to break down the door without a warrant,” the attorney said.
Officials seized the children without a warrant, without probable cause, and without “an imminent circumstance and exigency,” which is also a Fourth Amendment violation, he said.
The family is also suing over their 14th Amendment rights, which the officials took away when they denied the parents the right to raise their children as they see fit, he said.
“The only type of remedy that they can see under the law is damages,” Thompson said.
“So while our ultimate goal here is not for a windfall, it’s important to set an important precedent so that DCF can’t do this to other families. The only way we can do that is to make them come to the table and, and show a court that what they did was wrong,” he said.
The Epoch Times reached out to Waltham officials but had not received a reply as of press time.