It was half past five on a Wednesday evening in Tomball, Texas, LeVar Jones pulled off the highway. Put his car in park and sent a text to his boss, just an update. I'm waiting on law enforcement to meet me at the residence. As he would later testify, LaVar was worried about how this night might play out. I do believe that they will give me a hard time. That's why I have not initiated yet.

So I'll wait and play it by ear. Two hours later, he was still waiting. The police back up he requested wasn't on the way and LaVar decided to go it alone. I'm going to go ahead and attempt to initiate.

He drove north on a tree lined country road, passing pastures lined with white fences. Then he turned off into a newly built subdivision where all the trees were chopped down. But the streets are all named after them. Right, turn on Pine Trees Drive. Left on Hickory Lake. Right on Blackbox. He pulled up outside a two storey brick house with big glass windows, a small square of lawn, one of many that looked almost exactly like it, the home of Melissa and Dillon Bright.

He was here because he believed that these two might harm their children, that they might already have harmed their children. That's why he had to act tonight.

LaVar was nervous as he stepped out of his car and walked towards the front door inside the house. The brights had reason to be nervous to. That's why they planned to record everything that night. OK, it is seven thirty September 19th.

And our meeting with LeVar, we've just been told that the VA didn't know, couldn't have known that he was about to walk into the toughest fight of his career, a scandal that would rock the government agency where he works and raise serious questions like who's really looking out for children? And is this what it takes to keep them safe? Very kind of calm down. No, it's my children. Calm down. We're not going to do that, and so we can't see our children until they show my breastfed son, you are taking him from my breast.

You are responsible for taking my child away from my breast. We get support from both. Well, if you're like the 50 percent of people who suffer from eczema, psoriasis and sensitive skin, you might be used to your medicine cabinet being full of creams and moisturizers that just don't work. The team at Bode Well knows this all too well. So they created powerful creams and serum's powered by patented plant technology to help these conditions. I've struggled with eczema my entire life, and if you're anything like me, you know how hard it is to find new skincare products.

What I really love about the Bodel super cream is that it's really thick. It goes on super smooth, but it also absorbs into the skin and locks in all of that good moisture that your body needs. You can order Bodel online and have it delivered to your front door and there is no prescription required. Visible skin dotcoms, no harm to see what products are right for you. That's been w e l l skin dotcom. No harm a.h. armm and make sure to use the code no harm at checkout to get 10 percent off your first Bodalla order or your bod while membership.

Britney Spears is one of the most famous pop icons of the 21st century, but the more famous she got, the more harmful the press became until finally it was all too much for her to handle on her own. Stay tuned to the end of this episode to hear a preview of the latest season of Even the Rich Free Britney. My two hands can't hold you back from harm.

From NBC News and wondering, I'm Mike Hicks and Bob and this is Do No Harm. I will never forget the first time I hurt one of my kids, it was twenty fifteen my daughter had just turned to we were goofing around upstairs and at one point I picked her up by her little hands, swinging her gently back and forth. She giggled and begged me to do it again. My wife was standing nearby, smiling. But then when I swung Eleanor again, the giggling stopped.

And by the time I sat her down again, she was screaming. She was so small back then, she had no way of telling us what hurt. At an urgent care that afternoon, we were told that I had dislocated her elbow. It was a common injury for toddlers. The doctor said I shouldn't beat myself up. But that evening, as I looked down at my daughter in her crib, I felt like I failed her. When I started reporting this story, I thought it was about one family and a system determined to protect their children, but I soon discovered it was much bigger.

This is a story about what happens when our efforts to save the most vulnerable among us is what puts them in danger. And as I met more parents, I thought a lot about my daughter's hurt arm. I started to imagine how things might have gone differently. What if her injury had been more serious? What if the doctor had made different assumptions about me based on my race or how much money I make? What if the guilt I felt about hurting my child was the least of my problems?

This is Episode one, fracture's. In 2008, more than a decade before LeVar Jones showed up at his front door, Dylan Bright was a 25 year old sophomore at the University of Georgia. He'd worked in construction and other odd jobs after high school before deciding to go back for an engineering degree. It was the first day of the fall semester, a blistering August morning in Athens. And then I was excited because I was I was finally back in school and I knew what degree I wanted and I had a purpose.

Dylan was sitting in the engineering building, a two storey red brick facility perched atop a hill near the center of campus. When in walked another student, her sandy blonde hair pulled back in a bun.

She comes in and she's been huffing her backpack and she's hot and sweaty.

The other students slid into the chair next to Dylan. She she hates the story.

And I'm like, God, please let me stop sweating because I'm going to crap out this guy sitting next to me and the teacher immediately begins with an icebreaker.

And you're supposed to talk to the person beside you and tell them something about yourself. I introduced myself and I said I'm I'm actually the eldest sibling of eight total. And she looked at me and she said, Hi, my name is Melissa.

And I like the smell of Vic's paper about Melissa was 19, a sophomore wearing a sorority T-shirt.

And then I proceeded to tell him that my roommate also liked the smell of Vicks Vapor Rub, and we had an oscillating fan in our dorm room. And so we just open a can of Vicks Vapor rub and the whole dorm would smell like it.

If somebody had told me that I was meeting my husband, I'm sure I would have prepared myself differently.

They started dating in the fall of 2009. Three years later, after Melissa had graduated, they moved to Houston to be near Dylan's mom and to look for work. One night, a few months after the move, Dylan took Melissa on a date to the Kemah Boardwalk, a small amusement park overlooking Galveston Bay.

We had zero dollars. I had started my first engineering job about two weeks prior, and we were living with his parents out in Baytown. They had a gift card for Salt Grass Steakhouse. After dinner, they held hands and strolled the boardwalk. Before leaving, he asked her to go on a ride. Melissa always had a thing for Ferris wheels.

We're going around and we get to, you know, and as it stops every so often, other people on. And so it stops at the very top. And my man, well, you know, the moon is really clear tonight.

He pulled out a ring from his boot. And the first thing I said was no.

She said like, no, no, no. Like, I don't know more than 50 times. And because she was so surprised about midway through her excitement, she realized that she had been, like, screaming no.

And so she she immediately started saying, yes, yes, yes. They didn't want to wait, they got married just six weeks later at a Texas lake house owned by Dylan's grandparents. Fewer than a dozen family members were there. One of Dylan's cousins officiated. It wasn't long before they started talking about having kids.

I always wanted to be a dad. I again, I come from a big family and I got to grow up with the experience of all the kids and the siblings. And, you know, just with you at Christmas and Thanksgiving, I mean, it is next level when you have that many people all experiencing joy at the same time. And that was always my goal.

Yeah, we probably try it for about seven months or eight months or so before we got pregnant with Charlotte.

It was a long pregnancy. Melissa was 41 weeks along when the contractions finally began. She woke Dylan at one thirty in the morning and he drove her to the hospital. By 9:00 that morning, Dylan had their new daughter in his arms. There are, at least in my personal experience, very few moments that are so surreal. As I was holding your first child, Charlotte had wisps of dark hair, her eyes wide and alert. Dylan placed her carefully back in Melissa's arms.

As she lay on her mom's chest, Melissa whispered, Happy birthday. I felt like I was standing outside watching in bits you and this child and your husband. And I think you look at each other one hundred and say, like, how in the world did we make this?

Then came the sudden realization that almost every parent grapples with after the birth of their first child. They were responsible for keeping this baby safe.

I think that the most terrifying moment when you are a new parent is when you know the nurses there and she is assisting and she's only a button away and then you're shopping this this little being into a car seat and then they walk you down and they they just put you in the car and they're like by are we capable of raising this child, you know, loving her, supporting her physically, mentally, emotionally.

There's an enormous amount of fear of like, OK, now we're here, you know, and what do we do next?

Almost immediately, Dylan and Melissa knew they wanted to have another baby.

Maybe after Charlotte turned to we did not make it that long. A year later, in October, twenty seventeen, Dylan and Melissa returned to the Keema boardwalk where Dylan had proposed this time to mark a different milestone.

We're going to find out if having a boy or girl, I think it's a boy, I think is a girl.

They ate at the same restaurant. Melissa recorded a video on her cell phone as they opened the envelope at the table. They'd already picked out possible names to.

So it's a warm place. I've got a boy with a new baby on the way, Melissa made a difficult decision. She was going to walk away from her budding engineering career to be home with the kids full time.

My job wasn't my passion and my passion had yet to come. I just knew that being a mom was was the dream. Mason was born on February 4th.

Twenty eighteen. In the months that followed, Melissa filled her social media feeds with photos and videos of her happy babies.

Charlotte loved being a big sister. Happy. I give my son a kiss, but every parent knows the first few months with a new baby can be exhausting, especially after your second. Now the adults no longer outnumber the children, and hardly a moment goes by when one of them doesn't need you.

There are diapers to be changed, songs to be sung snot that literally must be sucked out of stuffy noses with a plastic tube. That last one was a complete and disgusting surprise.

Let me tell you, it's hard to give your undivided and full attention to one child and then to divide that in half between two dependent needy children and not just needy as in like they need their diaper changed or they need to be fed.

But you're like their sole entertainment.

I think your mom I think I knew you came in as they headed into their first summer as a family of four, Melissa filled her calendar with plans a beach day in early June, Mason's first fireworks on the Fourth of July.

And a couple of weeks later, on the morning of July 18th, Charlotte's first trip to a theater. The movie was Ferdinand. While the previews ran, Melissa snapped a photo of the blond haired toddler sitting in a red leather chair, grinning so big her eyes are squinted shut. Melissa texted the picture of the two year old to Dylan, who was at work.

Life is great and everybody's happy and healthy. And then just like that. It's a complete nightmare. Dylan was still at the office later that day when he got a call from Melissa. He figured she was going to ask him to stop at the store on his way home.

But when he picked up his phone, never in our our history together have I ever heard my wife make those kind of noises to be in such a panic. It's it's just this menagerie of yelling and screaming and crying. And I immediately knew that something was wrong. We get support from honey these days, it feels like, oh, my shopping is the only shopping we really do and that's where Honey comes in. It's the free browser extension that scours the Internet for promo codes and automatically applies the best one available at checkout.

It's so simple to use you just get honey on your computer for free and two easy clicks by going to join honey dotcom slash no harm. Then we are checking on one of its over 30000 supported sites. Honey pops up and all you have to do is click apply coupons. You wait a few seconds as honey searches for coupons for that site. If honey finds work and codes and will apply the best one to your cart. It's kind of like magic.

Just yesterday I was able to save about 12 bucks on some T-shirts and socks. Not the most exciting purchases I know, but saving money that's exciting every time. It's simple. If you have a computer, honey should be on it. It's free and works with whatever browser you use. You can get honey for free. Today I joined Honey Dotcom Slash. No harm, no ARMM that's join honey dotcom slash. No harm. In Hulu original film Run, you'll meet mother and daughter Diane and Chloe, Diane loves her daughter Chloe so much it's almost disturbing.

Diane has raised Chloe in total isolation, controlling every move she's made since birth. Soon enough, though, Chloe starts to realize that things aren't exactly what they seem, and her mom might be hiding more than she could ever imagine. Sarah Paulson stars in the new edge of your seat thriller Run, a new original film streaming only on Hulu that proves when mom gets a little too close, you need to run. Start your free trial now and stream run available only on Hulu.

I was like, Melissa, what's wrong, what's wrong, what's going on? Dylan stood up from his desk and pressed his phone to his ear, trying to make sense of his wife's frantic screams.

And all I could hear through her sobs was Mason. And then I heard something about head hit his head.

Mason hit his head, and then she goes calling nine one one and she hung up the phone. I jumped the truck. I rushed home as fast as I could. His office was only a couple of miles from home. As he sped at 90 miles per hour along residential streets, nightmare scenarios flashed through his mind. Was his son seriously hurt? Was he dead?

What had happened? This is just a terrifying thought, because all you know is that something is wrong. Your child is hurt and that's it. That's all you got. Never in my life have I ever felt. That powerless. Pulled up to the house, threw his truck in park, jumped out. He didn't even stop to turn off the engine. As he bolted in through the garage, he noticed a hose and a sprinkler set up in the front yard, a lawn chair in the driveway, a beach towel and his daughter's swimsuit discarded in the grass.

I ran inside and Melissa was there in the living room. Mason was wailing on the floor. Melissa was on the phone with 911 one. She was so frantic, it was difficult to make sense of what she was saying.

I just was pleading like, oh, God, oh, God help us. There wasn't time to ask his wife what happened. Dylan needed her to calm down. He asked her to go out to the street to flag down the ambulance while he stayed on the line with nine one one. He picked up his son and pulled him close to his chest.

You could tell he was he was kind of, I don't know, like he was maybe not very lucid, but I could see where his head was swollen. And I could tell that something, you know, maybe he hit his head because at this point, I had no idea what happened.

A few minutes later, two paramedics stepped out of an ambulance. They looked at the red lump bulging from the five month old baby's head and told Dylan they needed to get him to a hospital.

Melissa rode in the ambulance while Dylan followed in his truck, leaving Charlotte behind with Melissa's mom at Texas Children's Hospital. Emergency medical staff quickly checked Mason's vitals and connected him to monitors everybody in white coats. So I don't know who's are doctors or whose attendings or whose nurses, I don't know. But there was six people in the room, seven all plugging up different things and checking different vitals and all doing something busy around the that. And it's a little tiny little emergency room as doing knelt at Mason's bedside, medical staff rushing around him.

He reached through metal bars and grabbed his son's tiny hand.

I just kept saying, look, please, please be OK. Please be OK over and over and over again.

Then the world seemed to spin and Dylan slumped forward. A hospital worker ran over and caught him before he fell. And actually, I don't remember this, but apparently I actually passed out in that moment.

I was so scared I didn't know what to do. I just I go, oh, I forgot to take a breath. Someone brought down a chair and some juice.

Mason was in stable condition and had fallen asleep. Doctors just needed to run some tests to understand the extent of his injuries. While they waited, Dylan pulled the chair up next to his wife. And finally, for the first time since she'd called him in a panic more than an hour earlier, they had a chance to talk.

And so I'm like, babe, you know what happened, you know? And she immediately started crying again.

Melissa explained through tears how she and the kids have been playing in the sprinkler in the front yard, trying to stay cool on a muggy Houston afternoon. Soon after thirty minutes or so, Melissa said it was time to get the kids dried off so she could head inside to start dinner. We had carpet inside at the time, so I wanted to get the kids stripped down before I brought them inside to dry them off, clean them up. After taking off Mason's swim top, she looked around for a safe spot to set the baby down while she wrangled Charlotte's bathing suit off.

It was too hot to lay them on the driveway. Setting a wet baby in the grass would just make him itchy, so she placed him face up on the seat of a lawn chair. Mason was just five months old, wasn't crawling or rolling over yet, and she figured it would be safe.

But when she turned away, I just heard all of a sudden it was just this blood curdling scream.

She remembered turning and seeing Mason face up on the concrete driveway. He must have kicked his feet and pushed himself off the chair. She grabbed Mason and rushed inside to call 911 one her naked two year old trailing behind her as she spoke to the dispatcher, Mason suddenly stopped screaming.

I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know it was my my child dead. My child passed out. What do I do when a child passes out? I don't even know what the nine one one operator was even asking me at that time or telling me to do. All I know is that after shaking his body a little bit, it could have been ten seconds. It could have been thirty seconds to a minute. I don't know. He finally started screaming again and I had never felt so relieved to hear a child scream, even though just moments ago the screaming was the worst thing I had ever heard in my life.

Least Lisa screaming was better than nothing.

That's when Dylan rushed in through the garage in the hospital room. Melissa told Dylan she was sorry this was all her fault. Dylan hugged her and told her it was going to be OK.

Were you upset with her at that moment? No, no, no, no, no.

I've got I've I've got a son who's who's plugged up to a bunch of stuff, you know, on an emergency room table and then a wife who immediately is just in pieces because she somehow thinks that, you know, she caused no amount of of.

Conversation or anger or frustration or anything for me would in any way be worse than what Melissa was already putting herself through. So all I could do is to sit beside her and hold her and hug her and tell her I loved her and that we were there for Mason, that he was going to be OK. But as they looked at Mason asleep on the bed, they weren't so sure.

Your baby and a neck brace taking up like a fraction of this long hospital bed because it's so small compared to the bed. And you stare at him there and then you stare at the screen and you stare at these numbers and you don't know what they mean. But if they're green and that means good and you can take the next breath and then you stare at him again soon.

One of the doctors came to share the results of Mason's CT scan. He had a fractured skull. The doctor explained, and there appeared to be bleeding around his brain. You know, we're not medical professionals. We don't know what that means. And so we're just asking questions for now.

The doctors didn't have many answers, but Mason's injuries were serious enough that he needed to be transferred to Texas Children's Hospitals main campus in Houston to be evaluated by a neurosurgeon. While they waited, another hospital worker came into the room. She wasn't wearing scrubs or a white coat like the others. She carried a notebook and introduced herself as a social worker. She said she needed to take a walk with Melissa in the hallway, just the two of them. And I assumed it was, you know, paper.

Mom was there when Mason had entered in and she had to go sign paperwork because they're about to transport him.

And so I was like, OK, we get down the hallway, she closes the door, this little small conference room with a table and a few chairs. And she first she's like, how are you? And I just thought it was somebody checking in on me, my well-being, our well-being. How are we holding up in this traumatic event? And so the first thing I said is I just took a deep breath and I just held and I said this is the first moment of silence I've had and the last few hours and it's just so relieving.

Then the hospital social worker started asking questions. What had happened to Mason? What was going on before the incident? Had Melissa been stressed out or angry that day? No. Melissa told her it had been a normal day. It didn't really raise any red flags to me. I had no intention of hiding anything. So I tried to tell to the best of my ability everything that had just transpired. The couple hours beforehand.

Back in Mason's hospital room, Melissa described the conversation to Dylan and she wondered, should she be concerned? Dylan told her not to worry.

She's not interrogating you, Melissa. You know, they're going to transport us to this other hospital. They're probably just trying to gather all the facts so the doctors have all of the information that they could possibly need to, you know, to help Mason.

Whatever they were doing, it was to help their baby. But I'm like, babe, it's it's part of the treatment process. You know, it's it's part of it. We have to go through this. But the brights hadn't considered something important, a key detail that changed everything. Their baby had suffered serious injuries. And Melissa was the only witness. Again, I was very, very naive. Even at this point. It did not even dawn on me that they were accusing me of child abuse.

We get support from simply safe. Everyone wants to keep their home and family safe, whether it's from a break in fire, flooding or a medical emergency, simply save home security delivers award winning 24/7 protection with simply save, you know, just get an arsenal of cameras and sensors.

You get the best professional monitors in the business. They've got your back day and night ready to send police, fire or EMTs when you need the most straight to your door. My favorite part is they can set it up yourself in about 30 minutes. It's super easy. Trust me, if I can do it, anyone can then simply say it's professionals.

Take over monitoring your home 24/7 and ready to send help. The moment there's an alarm plus would simply save.

There's no long term contract, no hidden fees or installation costs. Right now, listeners of our show get a free home security camera.

When you purchase a simply safe system at simply safe dotcoms, no harm. You also get a 60 day risk free trial. So there's nothing to lose. Visits simply save dotcom, slash no harm for your free security camera today. That's simply safe. Dotcom, no harm. That evening, an ambulance transferred Mason to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Melissa rode with them. Dylan followed in his pickup as they walked through the hospital, sliding glass doors. The brights felt hope.

It really wasn't until we were there at Texas Children's in the room checked in. He was plugged up. And everything that you really are, at least for me, was able to kind of take enough of a breath to be like, OK, we're we're in the right place. We're in the right hands. He's going to be OK. He's going to be OK.

When Dylan described that moment to me, his words sounded familiar. I'd heard similar comments from many other parents during my years as a health care reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

Texas Children's. A gleaming glass facility in the Texas Medical Center is one of the top ranked pediatric hospitals in the country. I'd spent hours there over the years reporting on remarkable medical breakthroughs. I wrote about young parents who came from Idaho because only Texas children's doctors could save their conjoined twins. The Pakistani couple, whose daughter needed a rare double lung transplant, a baby born without an immune system, who, thanks to a treatment developed at Texas Children's, left with his mother's donated white blood cells pumping through his veins.

Texas Children's Hospital is a place where desperate parents come in search of miracles. But as the brights were about to discover, the hospital also prides itself as a national leader in another lesser known field of medicine, one focused on saving children's lives not from disease, but often from their own parents.

Dylan. Melissa spent the night curled up on a couch at Mason's bedside under the faint glow of monitors. Nurses were in and out of the room checking on Mason. The brights hardly slept.

It was the first moment we could take a breath and understand the weight of what was going on around us. I just cried and it was the first time, pretty much all afternoon that Dylan and I could even go through and process together. What happened.

The next morning, Mason had to have another brain scan. The baby squirmed and cried as staff held him down.

A few hours later, a new group of medical workers showed up at Mason's hospital room.

One doctor stepped forward, shook their hands and introduced himself. Dr. Kobana Sarpong. He said they were part of Mason's care team.

They used those exact words, you know, were part of the staff that's helping to treat your son, some of them wearing regular clothes, some of them in a doctor's coat, some of them in scrubs. And they came in and they kind of introduced themselves. They said that they were the cap team.

I didn't ask, what does that acronym stand for? What does captain stand for? You know, as far as I was concerned, it was just a group of doctors who were assigned Mason's case.

After asking Melissa detailed questions about how Mason's head was injured, the doctors asked the brights to step into another room. They wanted to go over the results of his CT scans and MRI.

So he got the computer brought up and he started pulling up images and they said, OK, so here's your son's skull on the screen.

Dr. Sarpong pulled up a 3D image. He pointed to a two or three inch line stretching across the top left of Mason's skull. That must have been where he landed in the driveway. Melissa thought I said, OK, so you see here, here's the fracture in a skull and you can kind of see the extent of it.

Then the doctor clicked on the image, rotating it until it was focused on the back half of Mason's skull.

He's showing us, you know, do you see how on this side of the head there's this marking and on this side of the head there's this marking and he zooms in and he zooms all the way in on this one little particular patch on the back of his head.

You see that because you see that tiny little line right there. And I'm like, yeah, that's another fracture. And I'm like, oh, OK. What does that mean?

The doctor wanted to know, had the baby fallen more than once? No, Melissa replied. Well, then where did the second skull fracture come from? Dylan and Melissa looked at each other.

That's when Dylan realized the doctors didn't believe his wife. You had doctors telling you that these injuries didn't match the story that your wife was saying. Did you ever, for a fleeting second suspect that your wife had hurt your baby? No, not at all. Never. Not once. And I knew my wife didn't hurt Mason. And so I'm like, there has to be an explanation. There has to be something that caused this.

I asked to talk with doctors and other workers involved in Mason's care, but Texas Children's Hospital declined to make anyone available for an interview as they walked away from their meeting with Dr. Sarpong. The. I still didn't realize he had a very different role than the other doctors caring for their son, and it would still be a couple of days before someone explained what the CHP and team stood for, child abuse, pediatrics. It's a relatively new medical subspecialty established only a decade ago.

If you were like me, you've probably never heard of it. These doctors are now stationed at nearly every major children's hospital in the country. They're trained to spot subtle signs of abuse in children too young to speak for themselves, diagnosing not only a child's condition, but also what caused it. And many parents who encounter them are surprised to learn often. Much later, these doctors don't just examine children's injuries. They also work closely with law enforcement. Their goal is simple to save lives.

After the meeting that morning, unbeknownst to the Brights, a young physician training under Dr. Sarpong typed a preliminary note in Mason's medical records. The presence of multiple skull fractures is concerning for a non accidental skeletal injury. The single impact fall would not be expected to cause both injuries within hours. Two men showed up in Mason's hospital room. They said they were with Child Protective Services and they said, hey, you know, we had a referral, that there's a possible case of child abuse.

They were button down shirt tucked into their pants and were holding notepads. They said they needed to ask some questions. Melissa felt her heart race, but she tried to stay calm. She remembers telling the investigators, thanks for being an advocate for children. We understand your job's hard. You know, children need an advocate. We have no problem giving you what you need to know. You know, you always see the shows on TV where if there's a gunshot wound type thing, the hospital has to call the police and they have to investigate type thing.

So, like, OK, that's fine.

They have to be here. They have to put this case together. But I knew that Melissa had done nothing wrong the whole time. I'm like, yes, well, let's answer your questions. Let's let's get through this part of it so you guys can can sign off and you can see this for what it is and that it was an accident and that we can get back to just focusing on Mason's recovery.

Melissa was nervous as she followed one of the investigators, a man named LeVar Jones, down the hall to begin her interview. She try not to panic. If they just told the truth, she told herself everything would be OK.

I hate that our family's involved in this, but I understand that we've got to go through the process because the process is what exists to protect children. And we just thought it was something we had to do in order for them to be able to protect all of the other children, not ours. From that moment forward, nothing went the way she expected. Coming up this season on Do No Harm. We have a vulnerable child that cannot speak to us open about from very serious injuries.

So we have to consider all that information until we have something to say. Without a shadow of a doubt, this child is safe. There's a line out there of what CPS should do and should not do. And it should be a very bright line. I see my job is pushing back and trying to make sure that line stays very bright and not crossed. I don't know what the procedure is. I don't know what needs to be plugged, but I never want to hear again that a doctor told CPS they need to look into a child being hurt that wasn't followed up on and dealt with swiftly.

People were looking at each other like, I can't believe this is actually happening because I had never seen that happen before, ever. I felt like the hospital, the police investigator, the prosecutors, CPS, the judge, they have their needs on our nick. And we couldn't breathe, literally, I couldn't breathe. There was nothing I can say and nothing I can do to make them let up. From one and NBC News, this is episode one of six of Do No Harm, a story about innocent children and the adults who are supposed to keep them safe.

Episode two is available now, but you can listen to the first three episodes ad free by joining one to three plus in the Wonder app.

Do No Harm was written, reported and hosted by me, Mike Hicks and a national investigative reporter for NBC News special. Thanks to my reporting partner Carrie Blake Singer, whose reporting made this podcast possible.

If you want to help us spread the word, please give us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts and be sure to tell your friends subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, the Wonder App or wherever you're listening right now.

In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. Please support them. Another way you can support the show is by filling out a small survey at one to read dotcom survey. Associate producers are Chris Siegel and Alison Bailey. Story editor is Julie Shapiro. Additional production assistance from Daniel Gonzalez, music supervisor. Scott Velázquez, managing producer. Leota Pandya, Sound Design by Jeff Schmidt, Executive Producer for NBC News by Steve Lutie, Executive produced by George Lavender, Marshall Lily and Hernan Lopez for one Dary.

One. It's January 30th, 2008, and Britney Spears is at her home in Beverly Hills. She lives in a gated community, a California specialty. There are gorgeous views of Los Angeles down below. Not that you can see them because the house is surrounded by privacy hedges, but it's one of those McMansion neighborhoods with a pool in every backyard. Her neighborhood is called the summit, which is a little ironic because right now Britney's close to rock bottom.

For a decade, Britney's been America's biggest pop star. But right now she's exhausted, pacing the floors of her mansion. She spent months in the courts fighting to keep custody of her kids. But a few weeks ago, she lost that fight. Damn, I'd be pacing the floors, too, and probably pulling out my hair. Oh, my God. I know. It's awful. And now Britney's vulnerable and raw and high on a potpourri of pills.

Her mom showed up earlier today hoping to calm her down. If anyone can. It's Lynn Spears, a soft spoken schoolteacher who's never far from Britney's side. Lynn wants Britney to get out of the house. She got a tip that someone is going to try to have her committed to a psych ward. But Lynn's no match for what Britney's going through and Britney's no match for what's about to happen. Twenty cops stormed into the house stomping and shouting, what the hell is going on?

That's what Lynn wants to know. One of the cops tells her we've got a 51 50 psychiatric hold. We're taking Britney in a 51 50 is a code that means she's a danger to herself or other people and can be put into a psychiatric hospital against her will for up to 72 hours.

On what grounds? Lynn demands to know. But the cop says they're just following orders. Orders from whom? Lynn doesn't know. Weirdly, Britney seems barely fazed by what's going on around her. It's only when paramedics strap her down on a stretcher that she calls out in a panic.

Mama, I'm here, baby. Lynn shouts, running after her with the paramedics block her path. They load Britney into the ambulance and roll past the summit's gates, where a gang of paparazzi are furiously snapping pictures. This is insane, right at the hospital, the first person to show up at Brittany's bedside is a guy named Sam Lutfi. Who's that? Yeah, he's well, no one's really sure what he is. Is he Britney's manager, her spokesperson, her friend, or is he some sort of creepy Svengali?

It's hard to say, but it doesn't matter right now because Britney trusts him. She's probably glad to see him. But Lynn, not so much. When she arrives and finds Sam at Britney's bed, she explodes. You put her in here, she shouts. Sam claps back. You're the one who always causes drama.

Britney begs them to stop shouting, stop fighting. Sam leaves to get some food. Lynn leaves to probably to cool down. A little while later, Britney can hear a knock on her door, it's her mom, but the door doesn't open. The doctors outside won't let Lin in. Then there's another knock. Britney can hear Sam out in the hall, but again, the door stays closed. The doctors won't let him in either. So she's all alone.

Yeah, and it's going to get worse tomorrow. Lynn Spears and her ex-husband Jamie will petition a judge for a restraining order against Sam Lutfi. Then they'll take it a step further. They'll ask for a temporary conservatorship and a judge agrees to grant it, putting Jamie in charge of Britney's assets, her comings and goings and her entire life. Wow, that's heavy stuff. Well, buckle up, because that's just the beginning. Oh, baby, baby.