Back in action; Catch-up: (11); Grace and Matthew Huang; Exonerated, freed and home from Qatar at last after a brutal ordeal based on medical ignorance and racial prejudice. New York Times. New York Times and CBS stories.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: It was good to note that Grace and Matthew Huang were finally exonerated and released  from their ordeal in Qatar. As has been stressed time after time in the pages of this Blog, one of the worse things a society can do is to falsely accuse a person of harming his or her child - or a child in his or her care. The horror is compounded when the false accusation is based on factors such as  flawed science, ignorance, tunnel vision, fear, personal agendas, and inadequate court procedures - at a time when the innocent, bewildered, grieving  parent or caregiver is trying to come to grips with the inexplicable death of the child. In the Huang's case, the pain was aggravated by prejudice against multi-racial families and being confronted with the allegations far away from home,  in a far away country, with an utterly different culture and justice system than their own.  I am so sorry for their loss and wish them strength.

Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.

STORY: "Qatar frees U.S. couple in death of daughter," by reporters Shabina S. Khatri and Rick Gladstone, published on November 30 by the New York Times.

GIST: "An American couple in Qatar who spent nearly two years fighting accusations that hey had killed their adopted daughter from Ghana were cleared of wrongdoing on Sunday in an emotional courtroom reversal by an appellate judge who said that they were good parents and that the prosecution had no case.........The parents spent nearly a year in prison before their case was heard for the first time last November, when they were released on their own recognizance but ordered to remain in Qatar. Their other two children already had been sent home to the United States in the custody of Mrs. Huang’s mother. In March, the couple were found guilty of a reduced charge, child endangerment, and sentenced to three years in prison. They appealed to have the verdict dismissed, while prosecutors sought a more severe sentence. The Huangs were ordered to remain in Qatar pending the appeals court decision. On Sunday, the appellate judge, Abdul Rahman al-Sharafi, discredited the prosecution’s case point by point in his ruling, a highly unusual development in the Qatari judicial system, where prosecutors and the police are often heavily favored. Judge Sharafi said it was clear that the Huangs were good parents who cared for their children, as shown by witness testimony, and that their two other children were not abused. He also questioned, as the Huangs’ defense lawyers had done, the integrity of the forensic report that was the crux of the prosecution’s case. “The defense offered plenty of proof that they are not guilty,” he said. Mr. Huang, reached later by telephone, said it was the first time in the case that a judge had acknowledged all the reasons that the prosecution’s case was groundless......... The case took on added significance as the State Department repeatedly expressed its concern about the fairness of the prosecution, which originally charged the Huangs with murder in the death of their 8-year-old daughter, Gloria, in January 2013, and had suggested that the Huangs were child traffickers. The prosecution had argued that the Huangs had killed Gloria by denying her food. The Huangs said she had an eating disorder, a vestige of her impoverished upbringing in Africa. A precise cause of death was never established. The case laid bare some ingrained prejudices in Qatar about adoption and multiracial families. Part of the original prosecution argument rested on suspicion that the Huangs, who are of Asian descent, could not have possibly adopted a black African girl and must have been seeking to sell her or her organs."

The entire story can be found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/world/middleeast/qatar-frees-us-couple-accused-of-killing-adopted-daughter.html

 Their first hand account to CBS news following return to Los Angeles. Their first hand account to CBS news following return to Los Angeles. While living in Qatar, where Matthew was working as an engineer with an American firm, their eight-year-old girl died suddenly and mysteriously. "Gloria was on the floor, foaming at the mouth, so I took her immediately to the emergency room at the hospital," Matthew said. "They did about 40 minutes of CPR and then they told me that Gloria had passed away." Gloria suffered severe malnourishment as a small child in Ghana and continued to have eating disorders, despite her parents' best efforts. She refused to eat for the final four days of her life. Qatari police accused Matt and Grace of starving her to death and prosecutors were suspicious of a mixed-race family, an uncommon sight in Qatar. "They thought we were human traffickers. They said we adopted our children to either harvest their organs or to do medical tests on them," Matthew said. "I mean, this is an outrageous charge against us-- who's a loving family. But the Qatari authorities just didn't understand multi-ethnic adoption." One day after Gloria's death, the Huangs were thrown in a Qatari prison and Josiah and Emanuel were sent to a Qatari orphanage......... After nearly a year behind bars, a judge granted them bail as discrepancies in the prosecution's case began to surface. A forensic pathologist hired by the family concluded there was "no medical evidence that Gloria's parents starved her" and said the Qataris never performed a proper autopsy. "They didn't take any tissue samples," Matthew said. "They even got her height and weight wrong on the autopsy," Grace said."

The entire story can be found at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/matthew-grace-huang-home-cleared-in-death-of-daughter-in-qatar/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: 

Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
 
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located  near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.

The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith

Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
 
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
 
I look forward to hearing from readers at:

hlevy15@gmail.com.

Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;