Posted on 02/26/2012 8:50:05 AM PST by smoothsailing
Tim Blight
February 26, 2012
Douglas Kennedy, Fox News correspondent and son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, has been charged with assault after a 7 January incident in a New York hospital.
2 nurses at the Mt Kisco hospital alleged that Kennedy became violent after they tried to prevent him from taking his newborn son Bo outside of the ward. Kennedy says he wanted to "get some fresh air" and had already received permission from other nurses on duty, Reuters reports.
The confrontation began after nurses issued a "code pink", an alert that someone is attempting to abduct a baby. The incident was partially caught on surveillance camera; although obscured by a doorway, nurse Cari Luciano can be seen falling to the ground.
Luciano stated that Kennedy "raised his right foot and with tremendous force kicked [her] in the pelvis area". Another nurse, Anna Lane, accused the New York-based journalist of twisting her arm, although this appears off screen on the surveillance video.
Kennedy has been charged with harassment and endangering the welfare of a child.
Kennedy and his wife have labeled accusations "absurd" in an interview with NBC New York. His lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, called the altercation the result of "aggressive and grossly inappropriate behavior by two nurses".
"Whatever Douglas did came about only because the nurse was lunging to grab his child from his arms. What Douglas did was simply to protect his baby," he added.
A date for the hearing has not yet been announced.
Ernie’s tagline seems more and more appropriate the longer this thread goes-
I came back to this thread from eating dinner to see if reason had prevailed, only to find that some here are no longer satisfied to merely join a mob to convict and lynch people because their name of “Kennedy” proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt never mind due process-but now they have decreed that “defending a Kennedy” makes one a troll who advocates violence against women. Being intolerant like that makes FReepers look worse than liberals.
Nope, I would have sent them home.
I take verbal discharge orders all the time.
I think you are projecting. Either that are you are a very immature adult. You can scream you’re little heart out but the only one that looks like an ass is you.
You telling anyone to seek counselling is laughable. I can just see you stomping your little feet, holding your breath and turning red. Makes me smile.
What you are defending is that is is completely acceptable to kick a woman in the pelvis.
You cannot seperate the fact of the alleged provocation ( preventing a father from taking a baby off the floor) to the final act of kicking a nurse in the pelvis.
The courts are going to look at the kick, not the provocation.The assault is the issue here.
Even if the man is physically attacked by a woman ( which did not happen in this case), he should walk away.
A real man does not assault a woman.
If you want to compare me to DU- that is a laugh riot.Most of the liberals who voted for Obama ( Chris Brown and all the gangsta rappers)- love to beat up women and call them bitches like you have done.
That is ghetto mentality.
You should be on DU.
No man should ever hit a woman. Never.
The Kennedy gene sure makes them kill, rape and beat up women. To top it off, a Freeper is defending him.
while not an attending, a physician present.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you are an MD, then you should know the following:
** He may not have been a physician.
** He may not have been known at all to the nursing staff in the maternity unit.
** Even if he was an attending physician and known by the staff, he has absolutely no authority in the maternity unit.
Again:
If there had been a misunderstand about permission to leave the unit, Kennedy merely needed to say, “Please call your nursing supervisor.” Another rational and legal approach would have been to call the public relations department of the hospital.
But...If he had done this, he likely would not have had **immediate** gratification of his needs.
That’s why I said:
“On one hand, he (Kennedy) should have asked to talk with a supervisor first and not have forced the issue and IMO gotten into a physical confrontation and he may have been acting like a jerk.”
But when the nurse told my dad and I that we couldn’t leave the hospital and threatened to call the police - a gross overreaction and unnecessary escalation on her part, I asked her to call a supervisor and she basically told me she was “in charge” of the floor and she didn’t need to call any supervisor.
That’s when we simply left, her personal power trip not impressing me or my dad one bit. And if she had called the police and we had been detained or arrested or if she had tried to restrain us, believe me, there would have been a lawsuit.
But I don’t know all the facts in this case and that’s why I said I’m reserving judgment and not jumping to conclusions one way or another.
Another jackass heard from.
YOU are laughable.
Also....Unless it would be an emergency delivery of some kind, parents are well informed of the visiting and discharge policies of the maternity unit. If they don't agree to this there are other options for mothers with uncomplicated pregnancies and deliveries.
By the way, the name “Kennedy” is not uncommon. I wouldn't know Douglas Kennedy if he dropped dead at my feet. Why are we assuming that these nurses knew who he was and why should it matter that he is from a notorious family?
Honestly, nurses have enough to do medically and surgically with their patients without thinking about every legal aspect of whether or not a baby can leave the hospital without his mother, or judge each case individually. They can't possibly know every aspect of their patient’s lives (posing fraudulently as a member of the family, custody issues, pending divorces, spousal abuse, etc.). That is why hospitals have these very sensible safety protocols for nurses to follow.
Sensible and emotionally mature people understand these issues and don't hassle the nurses about trivialities such as taking a baby for a stroll outside.
As trivial as this little walk outside was it could have managed successfully with a polite, “May I speak to the nursing supervisor”, or “May I have the number of the public relations department.”
Kicking a nurse in the pelvis while carrying a newborn? Unbelievable! This is not rational behavior. For what? A walk outside?
You were right to leave, the nurse in your case was totally out of line.
In regards to pediatric patients, the hospital does have the right to detain, especially when policies and procedures are being broken. The hospital has the duty to the infant, because the infant is not an adult who can make their own decisions.
A hospital can get sued if they discharge a pediatric patient to an unsafe home situation.
“.........Sensible and emotionally mature people ....”
Now this is a Kennedy we are talking about!
do FR a favor and crawl back into your hole, or under the bridge or basement you call home, you tiny, worthless, POS troll.
Ernie, if you have to resort to that kind of a personal attack then you've already lost your argument.......
And Ernie, here's some more fuel for your anger......
Stolen and switched babies: How to keep your newborn safe
Switched, Stolen, Black Market Babies & The Baby Brokers
Kidnapped Baby Finds Family After 23 Years
Nobody has taken into account that this baby was still in the hospital after three days. Was the baby being kept in the hospital for this long or was it the mother who wasn’t discharged.
The possibilities exist that the baby had medical issues, the mother had medical issues, or possibly the staff was reluctant to discharge this mother/baby out of concern for the environment to which they were being returned.
The ease with which this man kicked a female in the groin makes me wonder if there are physical abuse issues.
Isn’t that the truth?
I can see disagreeing with a nurse (even more so a doctor).
But who of any decency and grace immediately escalates to an altercation, let alone kicking a nurse to the floor?
I'm saving this one for prosperity. Considering you've only been around since last summer, you obviously haven't learned anything about civil discourse. Until you get a grip on your anger issues, my guess is that you aren't going to last for much longer......
When you have a kid in a hospital (place reserved for killing legally) you are taking your chances; even for a member of American royalty.
The majority of Kennedys are most definately the best example of why the words “political” and “dynasty” should never be in the same sentence. That said, there are good and bad in all families. And I do think there is a distinct possibility of pissed off hospital staff and the smell of money fueling that video-it just looks like something ripe to go bad-but let the court decide that.
And you are dead on-it is not WHO the person is-it is about the law being the same for all. I do believe that was why most of our ancestors came here in the first place. Some of the posts on this thread bring the words “witch hunt” to mind as well as “lynch mob”.
And nanny gestapos need to get lost, period-people need to be responsible for their own families and not expect to sue if some business or institution doesn’t handle everything-”those are the rules because we don’t want to be sued” is just f***ed up logic-this is not the Soviet Union, nor does it need to be...
She looks like she’s related to Nancy Pelousey.
Honestly, nurses have enough to do medically and surgically with their patients without thinking about every legal aspect of whether or not a baby can leave the hospital without his mother, or judge each case individually. They can't possibly know every aspect of their patient’s lives (posing fraudulently as a member of the family, custody issues, pending divorces, spousal abuse, etc.). That is why hospitals have these very sensible safety protocols for nurses to follow.
As trivial as this little walk outside was it could have managed successfully with a polite, “May I speak to the nursing supervisor”, or “May I have the number of the public relations department.”
First you are presuming that he didn’t request to speak to a supervisor or that the nurses in the incident even gave him a chance to do so. There was in this case, no question that he was the father of the baby or that he was trying to abduct the baby from his wife. It would seem rather obvious that he was cleared and to be in observed in the ward. His wife stands behind him and in saying that the nurses were the aggressors and he was doing nothing wrong. What you are suggesting in that nurses can’t be bothered with “thinking” is nothing different than other ridiculous “zero tolerance” policies such as those where a teacher has a child arrested and a parent put in jail because a kid in kindergarten draws a picture of a gun. Yea, I know; rules are rules; they are after all for our own good and for the children.
Sensible and emotionally mature people understand these issues and don't hassle the nurses about trivialities such as taking a baby for a stroll outside.
And that could also be reasoned to the other side of the argument to say that sensible and emotionally mature people understand that you don’t hassle a dad about trivialities such as taking his baby for a harmless stroll outside
Kicking a nurse in the pelvis while carrying a newborn? Unbelievable! This is not rational behavior. For what? A walk outside?
So what about lunging at a dad with his newborn son in his arms? The nurse claims the baby’s head was bouncing around but the video doesn’t exactly support that claim from what I saw. I could understand if this was a first time dad but he and his wife have three other children so I tend to think he knew how to hold a baby. I can’t say that while holding a new born that anyone coming at me in an aggressive manner wouldn’t be considered a threat that I would respond to in kind.
Again, I’m not defending his actions as I don’t know all the facts. But neither am automatically I willing to accept the nurses side of the story.
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