Father sues DHS, hospital following custody fight

A father who has been fighting for custody of his two children has won that right, and is now suing the county’s Department of Human Services and a local hospital.

Ray Woodson and his children’s mother Carla Legates have been battling DHS for nearly two years and now both mother and father have filed federal lawsuits against the state agency.

Their first child was removed in October 2007 at 2 months old. His sister was taken in August 2008 when she was only six hours old and still in the nursery at Claremore Regional Hospital.

Legates had been previously involved with DHS and the court system concerning custody of her first child who was only a few months old when he entered a foster home in 2005.

In May, Woodson won custody of the children after a 14-day jury trial, according to the filing. Now Woodson is claiming the state violated the HIPPA law and his civil rights.

The couple’s first child was born in Wichita, Kan., and was taken into custody Oct. 2, 2007, by Rogers County DHS after Legates returned for a court appearance concerning her first child and was asked where her newborn baby was located. She was arrested and placed in the county jail for not revealing the baby’s whereabouts and later charged with misdemeanor obstruction of justice to which she pleaded guilty.

Authorities were able to learn where the baby and Woodson were located through recorded jail telephone conversations and subsequently seized the baby and took Woodson into custody for violating a child custody order. During court hearings throughout Woodson’s criminal case following his arrest, testimony revealed the child custody order was signed less than an hour before he was arrested. However, Woodson eventually pleaded guilty to the charge and spent several months in county jail.

During their battle for custody of their first child, Woodson and Legates gave birth to a second child in August 2008. But that child was taken into DHS custody straight from the hospital just six hours after birth. The state claimed the child was deprived, even though Woodson and Legates had not been given a chance to be parents to either of their children. In his filing, Woodson claims Claremore Regional Hospital violated the HIPPA law by providing medical information concerning his child to DHS.

The filing — which names Claremore Regional Hospital, DHS, Kila Bergdorff, Jessica Pruitt, Barbara Priest, Janie Vecsey, Kelly Gassaway-Oxford as defendants — states that even though there was a two-day adjudicatory hearing in December 2008 concerning the second child and “the child was found not deprived by the father,” DHS kept the child in custody for eight more months.

Woodson is seeking actual damages in excess of $10,000, punitive damages in excess of $10,000 and a reasonable amount of attorney fees.

In Legates’ federal suit, she is claiming her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were violated when her children were taken into state custody. The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to provide substantial due process such as parental and marriage rights, which includes holding hearings before a person’s property interests can be taken away.

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