After more than five months of being shuffled from foster home to foster home up and down the Keys, the Nowatney kids— little Natalie, 3, and Nathan, 1— are finally safe with relatives in Emden, Ill. But it took the intervention of a U.S. Congressman and an order by Judge Mark Jones to make that happen.
If you're a regular reader of Key West The Newspaper, you already know the story of Nick and Carrie Nowatney and their children. Nick is a medic with an Army Special Forces unit assigned to Key West Naval Air Station.
Last Sept. 3, officials from the State Dept. of Children & Family Services (DCF) came to the Nowatney home and took away their kids. Carrie was still breast-feeding Nathan. No matter. They took him anyway.
DCF officials said they suspected child abuse because both children had been treated for broken arms within the past year. Back in 1998, Natalie, at home alone with her mother, fell off a chair and broke her arm. Nick was on duty in Kuwait.
Last Sept. 2, Nathan, at home alone with his father, fell off a sofa and broke his arm. But doctors also found an older, unexplained "greenstick" fracture. That apparently set off some alarms and somebody at the hospital called the DCF.
But the doctor who treated Nathan says he saw nothing that would suggest that the boy had been abused.
"We were stunned," Carrie said. "We couldn't believe that they were actually taking away our children. We knew those injuries were accidental, but nobody would listen.
"But we were encouraged when we were told that they had to have a hearing within 30 days and give us a chance to be heard and get our children back."
But that never happened. Five months later, the children had been placed in three different foster homes— and the state was still trying to build a case against the parents.
Meanwhile:
• The Army and the Navy completed two separate investigations and concluded "no abuse/neglect found."
• Full body x-rays of both children showed no evidence of abuse.
• Both parents voluntarily sat for polygraph examinations. No deception found.
• Nick's mother traveled from Arkansas to take custody of the children. The DCF refused to turn the kids over to her— unless she would testify that the Nowatneys were child abusers. She wouldn't.
Because neither Nick nor Carrie will admit quilt, State Attorney Kirk Zuelch seems determined to take them to trial. Reportedly, he will bring in several out-of-town expert witnesses who will testify that the injuries "could"have been the result of child abuse.
But defense witnesses will reportedly include neighbors, co-workers, members of the Nowatney's church, the doctors who treated the children, Army and Navy investigators, as well as expert witnesses whose testimony is expected to counter Zuelch's witnesses.
"We didn't do anything wrong and we're determined not to be bulldozed," Nick said. "But the fact that our children were virtually being held hostage has really been devastating. Nathan has spent almost half of his life in foster care!"
Last November, the Nowatneys asked local DCF officials to take the necessary steps to qualify Carrie's sister in their hometown of Emden, Ill., as a foster parent— to allow the kids to live with relatives until the