Baby Steffen during happier days. Photo supplied by the family.

UPDATE 6/6/2017

Civil Rights Abuse? Judge Only Gives Parents 24 Hours to Find Doctor Before Baby is Removed from Life Support

UPDATE 6/3/17

Grandma Lisa took this video of Baby Steffen responding to her voice and touch today, and after recording it, she told Health Impact News that the head nurse told her she could no longer record:

Baby Scheduled to go Off Life Support Responding to Family – Rally and Court Date on Monday Morning

by Health Impact News/MedicalKidnap.com Staff

The family of Baby Steffen has court on Monday morning, June 5th, at 9 am, and supporters are holding a rally and prayer vigil simultaneously at the Montgomery County Juvenile Court at Two Millennium Plaza, Clarksville, TN 37040. They are inviting people from all over to come and show support and pray to save Baby Steffen’s life.

See our original story on this family here:

Medically Kidnapped Baby Scheduled for Execution TODAY!

We asked grandmother Lisa Rivenburg if Baby Steffen is showing any signs of responding to family. She responded:

YES! ALL signs! He opens his eyes, squeezes my hand, puts his hands up in the air, kicks his feet. He smiles. He grimaces. He makes his little “Elvis face.”

She told us that he lifts his hands up when she plays his favorite song, “Awake, My Soul,” by Chris Tomlin.

He’s completely cognizant when he’s not heavily medicated.

Steffen responds to his family as much as he can while being limited by wires and tubes. Lisa said that he fights the medications that make him sleep.

The family has court on Monday, the day before the court order expires that is keeping Baby Steffen alive. They have been told that Vanderbilt Hospital intends to bring in a doctor from their hospital “to say the baby has no chance.”

They report that they need to find a neurologist who will look at the records and the baby to testify that he is not brain-dead. The also seek a heart transplant doctor who can give a second opinion as to whether or not a new heart will help him. Vanderbilt doctors have reportedly denied a heart transplant.

When Baby Steffen entered foster care at 3 months of age, he had congenital heart defects and Down Syndrome, but he was doing well at the time. He was not expected to need heart surgery until 6 months of age. He contracted a serious viral infection in foster care just weeks later, which started a snowball effect of multiple heart surgeries, and now he is on a heart and lung bypass machine keeping him alive – a machine that DCS and Vanderbilt doctors want to unplug.

Lisa told us that the doctors told the family at one point:

We messed up.

She reports that the baby’s parents were in the hospital room when the doctors said that they did so much to the baby and so many surgeries close together that it hardened his heart muscle.

The family still believes that there is hope. They are praying for God to heal Baby Steffen, and to bring him and his big sister Annalise home from foster care.

Annalise, age 7, told her parents on the phone Friday that she left a card in her brother’s room for people to sign. When they returned to the room shortly after, the card was gone. They searched everywhere and asked the staff, but no one reportedly knew anything about it.

Annalise is still in the custody of DCS in foster care as part of this medical kidnapping case, and she wants to go home to her family.

Who to Contact:

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam may be reached at (615) 741-2001, or contacted here, to ask that life support be continued for Steffen Rivenburg Jr., to give him a chance to live. Governor Haslam is also on Facebook.

The Senator for their district is Dr. Mark Green. He may be reached at (615) 741-2374, or contacted here.

Their state Representative is Representative Joe Pitts. He may be reached at (615) 741-2043, or contacted here.

The DCS main office number is (615) 741-9701. Supervisor Heather Wyatt’s cell phone is 931 905 3800, and office phone is 931 503 3253.

To reach the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, call this public, non emergency number:

Patient Relations: (615) 322-6154

For assistance, non-medical questions or complaints. This line is open every day from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. If you are calling outside of these hours, listen to the recorded message carefully. Press zero for the Vanderbilt operator and request the Children’s Hospital Administrator on call.

Supporters have set up a Facebook page for the family called Reunite the Rivenburgs.

Published on June 3, 2017

2 Comments

guest June 5, 2017 at 9:46 am - Reply

My heart breaks for you. I can’t bring myself to tell my story yet, the horror is too much to revisit, but a similar thing happened with my Mom, and there was nothing I could do about it. I am a broken person now.

grieving mom June 4, 2017 at 10:55 am - Reply

Another research hospital. Make note of that. As far as baby responding to stimuli from family members, the so called experts, those who want to execute this baby, will say all baby’s actions/responses are not really deliberate responses but are "involuntary movements." Hopefully the family is successful in having baby’s brain waves (and other tests) monitoring for signs of life and brain activity. I was refused that request/demand for my poor daughter. The most important point in this family’s horrendous ordeal that we should be getting is that WE, the parents, have been successfully downgraded so much we have no "parental rights" in the U.S. Nor does the child. I too was told by a so called doctor in a research hospital that the decision to remove (or not) the tube pumping air into my daughter’s lungs was up to him and or the hospital and not up to me. He had absolutely no compassion, no conscience, no emotion, but cold as ice and extremely quick at setting an execution date, "In 24 hours she WILL be removed from life support," were his words to me as soon as she went into coma, as I begged and pleaded with him. He then threatened me that if I wanted to be in the room to hold her hand while she was (put to death) that I need to remain compliant and calm, that if I started any kind of a fuss he will call security and police to have me removed from hospital grounds and to jail. An impossible situation. An impossible decision. Be with your child to help them "cross over" in as Peaceful way as possible in such a situation as this, or fight with all you’ve got to stop them and be in jail far from your child as they are brutally cruelly executed and die without mama or anybody they love there to comfort and to hold her, and to Pray for her, encouraging her to go to Jesus, that it is ok, that everything is going to be ok, that mama is there and it is ok to go now to Jesus. I pray this family will "win" the "right" to make all decisions for their own child, and not the doctor or other entity. Even if it were the case that their baby "has no chance of survival" it is the PATRENTS decision to make for their own child, not state, government or doctor.