New Film Exposes Shaken Baby Syndrome Myth – Opponents Want to Silence it at Film Festivals

Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor

A new film exposing the corruption behind much of the Shaken Baby Syndrome diagnosis used to remove children from the custody of their parents, and in some cases put parents behind bars, is currently making its way through the film festival circuit. The Syndrome is a film produced and directed by Meryl Goldsmith, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who teamed up with her cousin and investigative reporter Susan Goldsmith as the co-producer and editor. It is Meryl Goldsmith’s feature directorial debut, according to the film’s website. Included in the cast are doctors and law professors.

Lauren Kirchner, writing for the Pacific Standard Magazine, recently interviewed Susan Goldsmith and discussed the opposition the film has received from the medical community:

Many of the film’s subjects have dedicated their professional lives to gaining attention to updated research on child injuries, and to defending accused abusers in court. For this, they have faced a huge backlash from the doctors and prosecutors who disagree. The filmmakers knew they’d get swept up in that, too. Many film festivals that considered including the film were threatened with litigation, and accused of promoting child abuse, the filmmakers said in a recent interview.

“This is a theme in our film—how the proponents of shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma have tried to silence their critics,” Susan Goldsmith says. “And that theme is extending to here and now, to our documentary. I was expecting it. We thought we were helping by uncovering these other medical conditions that can look like abuse, but are not [abuse]. It actually threatens the entire shaken baby syndrome working group and industrial complex.”

Kirchner writes that those who support Shaken Baby Syndrome in the medical field are part of a powerful and influential group, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome. Before the film’s first screening, they tried to get the Kansas International Film Festival to block the film, calling it “dangerous” even though they had not viewed it.

Here is a description of the film from the film’s website:

Audrey Edmunds, mother of three, spent 11 years in prison for killing a baby she never harmed. And she is not alone. What happens when widely held beliefs based on junk science lead to the convictions of innocent people?

The Syndrome is an explosive documentary following the crusade of a group of doctors, scientists, and legal scholars who have uncovered that “Shaken Baby Syndrome,” a child abuse theory responsible for hundreds of prosecutions each year in the US, is not scientifically valid. In fact, they say, it does not even exist.

Filmmaker Meryl Goldsmith teams with Award-winning investigative reporter Susan Goldsmith to document the unimaginable nightmare for those accused and shine a light on the men and women dedicating their lives to defending the prosecuted and freeing the convicted.

The Syndrome uncovers the origins of the myth of “Shaken Baby Syndrome.” It unflinchingly identifies those who have built careers and profited from this theory along with revealing their shocking pasts. Shaken baby proponents are determined to silence their critics while an unthinkable number of lives are ruined.

Last year (2014) law professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, who is featured in Goldsmith’s film, wrote a an article for Slate about 43-year-old Jennifer Del Prete, a former Illinois day care worker who had served 10 years of a 20 year prison sentence over Shaken Baby Syndrome, but was then released by a federal judge. Tuerkheimer’s article, Finally, a Judge Calls Shaken Baby Diagnosis an “Article of Faith”, stated that the ruling was “one of a growing number that reflect skepticism on the part of judges, juries, and even prosecutors about criminal convictions based on the medical diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.”

Tuerkheimer went on to write:

The case is also a critical turning point. The certainty that once surrounded shaken baby syndrome… has been dissolving for years. The justice system is beginning to acknowledge this shift but should go further to re-examine and perhaps overturn more past convictions. (Read the full article.)

Shaken Baby Syndrome Can be Evidence of Vaccine-Induced Rickets

Christina England has written about the work of Dr. David Ayoub, a practicing radiologist from Springfield, Illinois, who has linked healing fractures found on x-rays of children, used to a mistakenly diagnosis Shaken Baby Syndrome, to infantile rickets. Dr. Ayoub believes that it is not only a poor diet and the lack of sunshine that is responsible for the growing number of children suffering from rickets, but also the growing number of vaccinations containing the adjuvant aluminium.

Dr. Ayoub, an expert on the subject of infantile rickets, has been involved in hundreds of cases of misdiagnosed rickets worldwide and has testified on the behalf of many innocent parents charged with Shaken Baby Syndrome. (Read more about Dr. Ayoub here.)

Support The Syndrome Film!

Do not let the medical industry intimidate and block the message of The Syndrome! False Shaken Baby Syndrome charges are ripping children away from their parents and putting innocent people behind bars! The message of this film must reach the public!

Here are the upcoming screenings, and we encourage you to attend and support this film:

Geneva Film Festival—this Thursday 3/12 9 p.m. and Saturday 3/14 3 p.m. @Dodson Place, 416 South 2nd St., Geneva, IL

(In)Justice For All Film Festival–Monday, April 13th 6:30pm @ Northwestern University Chicago, IL

Arizona International Film Festival–April 9-26th (TBA) Tucson, AZ

For more times and showings at future dates, be sure to visit the film’s website: TheSyndromeFilm.com

You can also follow them on Facebook!

Published on March 11, 2015

6 Comments

Susan March 15, 2016 at 8:40 pm - Reply
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Glad this is coming out.
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Amy Norton March 6, 2016 at 8:46 am - Reply

The worst part is that you are expected to admit to committing a crime you did not do, and you are given no other option. There is no way for you to prove yourself without going through a very expensive and risky trial. The average person has no idea what really goes on with the accused. Before this happened to me, I was naive and assumed that good people who are innocent will be able to tell their side of the story and be believed. The accused never get heard. Most of the time lawyers say to keep a low profile until the case is resolved. And if you plea out, like I chose to do (most difficult decision of my life), people think it is such an “outrage” that you “got off so easy” despite none of them having seen any of the actual evidence the judge saw. 

I do not believe there would be such a huge group of people who were accused of SBS and continued to find ways to support causes like the film “The Syndrome” if they actually were guilty. I have a child. Why would I support a cause that tries to get child abusers off free if I wasn’t actually in their shoes and know for a fact that I did not do it? And if I know I did not do it, I know there have to be others. WE are the ones who know the truth. Why isn’t anyone listening to us?

Mac Zeff July 8, 2015 at 10:05 am - Reply

“We are living in times of tremendous oppression and injustice because of lack of knowledge and powerful interests that benefit from ignorance and erroneous beliefs.  They have a vested interest in keeping people in the dark even if it results in innocent people going to prison.”

You just described the entire US judicial system.  Innocent until proven guilty no longer exists.

Lynda June 17, 2015 at 12:08 am - Reply

Our baby was NOT shaken.  And because we did not admit what we did not do, he was taken from us and permanently adopted out.  We are devastated but still fighting.  This information HAS to get out, and I commend and admire those with the guts to bring it forward.  God bless you!

Ray Ferris March 12, 2015 at 9:42 pm - Reply

There was an important judicial inquiry in Ontario Canada four or five years ago. Mr. Justice Goudge of the supreme court issued his decisions. The inquiry was into the work of a pathologist, who had sent a number of people to prison based in the SBS hypothesis. The Goudge report made a very important ruling. The judge ruled that the cause of an injury could not be determined from medical symptoms alone and that corroboration was required. He said that determining the cause of injury was a judicial matter and not a medical one. As a result of his report many cases were successfully appealed in Ontario. This report dampened down the SBS activity in all of Canada. In Britain there is a hospital in London called St. Thomas’.. It used to send out teams of doctors to brief defence lawyers in how to defend against allegations of shaking. The medical establishment over there has never got on the SBS bandwagon. Backlashes against exposure of unproven hypotheses is nothing new. A few years ago there was a big scrap in the American Psychologist’s Association. Recovering suppressed memories of childhood abuse was a lucrative gig for some psychiatrists and psychologists. This went as far as recovering memories of satanic ritual abuse. The FBI investigated over 300 cases of alleges satanic ritual abuse and could find no shred of evidence to support any of the claims. Recovered memory counselling faded out or went underground, but not before a nasty rearguard action by those losing revenue.

Sara Lee Langsam March 11, 2015 at 8:50 pm - Reply

We are living in times of tremendous oppression and injustice because of lack of knowledge and powerful interests that benefit from ignorance and erroneous beliefs.  They have a vested interest in keeping people in the dark even if it results in innocent people going to prison.

However, we are also fortunate to have courageous people who push back against this darkness and deception and shine the light of Truth on the particular issue at hand at great cost to themselves. 

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Meryl and Susan Goldsmith as well as all the brave doctors and law professors  who refused to be cowed as they created what promises to be a knockout documentary.  This film can take its place beside the movie ” Bought” and the soon to be published book “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth.”

And not a moment too soon.  We are in imminent danger of losing our freedom to make  a choice regarding vaccines for ourselves and our children.
Make no mistake about it.  These issuers are all linked together.  We owe it to our posterity to protect and preserve the rights that have been won for us at great cost in blood, sweat and tears by the early American patriots and are enshrined in the Constitution.