By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-01-08 17:21:01 | Updated at 2025-01-09 08:09:13
14 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // In the wake of an abuse case where a 26-year-old nurse named Erin Strotman allegedly broke the bones of six neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) infants, one of the victims’ fathers has said the only thing all the babies had in common was not race, as some have reported, but gender: They were all boys.
According to Fox News Digital, Dominic Hackey’s son Noah suffered a broken tibia in September 2023 while he was in the NICU at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Virginia. Noah and his twin brother, Micah, were both premature, born around 28 weeks. Doctors told the parents that Micah, who was relying on a ventilator, might not make it.
Hackey said he is now in contact with the other victims’ families.
“[We] confirmed that it’s not just all black babies,” he noted, telling Fox News Digital that only two of the victims are black.
He later added, “So far, in chatting amongst ourselves, we can’t find a pattern of why our babies, other than that: they were just boys.”
Now, Noah and Micah are healthy 16-month-olds. Noah needed physical therapy after he was released from the NICU. However, Hackey said both are now doing very well and that Noah is climbing, almost running, and going to “be jumping off things pretty soon here.”
Police confirmed to the Hackeys that their son had been abused. The parents initially thought that it was a strange accident, but their paternal grandmother immediately suspected abuse since Noah’s tibia was not broken during birth.
The hospital’s NICU was forced to close down on Christmas Eve 2024, after six babies between 2023-2024 were injured. Only then did the Hackeys find out through a news story that other babies had been injured at the same NICU.
Strotman is facing charges of child abuse and malicious wounding for one of the cases, and another six are under investigation. Three of the cases are reopened cases that were closed last year due to lack of evidence.
The hospital placed Strotman on paid leave at one point, which Hackey thinks is evidence that the hospital suspected wrongdoing.
“Finding out that she was put on paid leave in connection with our cases, that the hospital suspected her, that’s all new information … to all of us,” Hackey said, referencing the victims’ families.
Despite the traumatic abuse that Baby Noah underwent, Hackey is grateful that Noah and Micah are now happy and healthy.
“Experiencing two miscarriages and then having twins, that’s amazing,” he said. “And having them both here after being told you might lose one of them, the whole pregnancy and then after the pregnancy, it’s truly a blessing, truly a blessing. Not many people have the privilege to be parents, and I was blessed two times over, so I’m going to do whatever I can to protect them.”
