by Jessica Lussenhop, and photography by Sarahbeth Maney

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On a February afternoon in 2022, Dr. Bazak Sharon logged into a remote video meeting from his home office in Minneapolis. He propped up his cellphone next to his laptop and hit record on a video app.

There were several people in the meeting with Sharon, who at the time was a pediatrician with the University of Minnesota. Two hospital leaders, Sharon’s boss and a lawyer were there, too. But the person Sharon was most wary of was in the lower-right corner of the grid of faces: Dr. Nancy Harper, the director of the child abuse team at University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis.

Sharon suspected that the discussion, about the care of a 3-month-old named Hank, was going to be contentious. He worried that someday, perhaps even in court, he might need evidence of his role caring for Hank. He was prepared to argue with Harper if she challenged his clinical judgment, but it was quickly apparent that the quality of the care he provided was not at issue.

Hank was born small and was not eating well or gaining enough weight; sometimes, according to his parents, he just seemed to be in pain. (ProPublica is using a nickname for the child at the parents’ request.) At an appointment in January, a doctor ordered an endoscopy, a procedure where a tiny camera is threaded through the body, and also suggested an MRI.

The scans of Hank’s brain showed fluid pooled under both sides of his skull. The blood was old, possibly months old, and Hank was admitted to the hospital. Sharon met him the next day.

A member of Harper’s team named Dr. Caroline George also evaluated Hank that day. In her opinion, according to court records, the bleeding was “consistent with abusive head trauma.” Sharon had suggested other possible causes, including an injury from birth, an infection or even spontaneous bleeding. Sharon wrote in the child’s medical record that it’s “likely we will never identify the exact mechanism that caused his injury.”

Three days after Hank was admitted, Sharon said he learned that a county child protection services worker was preparing to come to the hospital to take custody of the baby, as well as his 2-year-old brother, William.

Sharon said that he was stunned that no one had spoken to him since he was Hank’s primary doctor. So he did something that seemed to put him at odds with George, Harper and hospital leadership: He told Hank’s parents, CPS and police he didn’t think the bleeding alone was enough evidence to say this was abuse.

Sharon was also concerned that separating a sick infant from his parents based only on a suspicion of abuse would cause more harm to Hank. Working with the detective assigned to the case, he admitted William, though the older boy was not sick, so that the whole family could stay in the hospital under the supervision of a nursing assistant while doctors continued to treat and monitor Hank.

But four days later, according to Sharon, his supervisor told him that he was being removed from Hank’s care team, and that he should not communicate further with the parents. When Sharon asked why, he said he was told it was at Harper’s recommendation. “The care,” he said, “changed the second she got involved.”

In less than 48 hours, a judge determined that Hank and William were in need of child protection services and their parents were forced to leave the hospital without them. The same day, Sharon said, he was summoned to the first of two meetings with hospital leadership and Harper. When his supervisors scheduled the second meeting — titled “Review of CPS Patient” in the emailed invitation — less than a month later, Sharon came prepared to record it.

Before all this, Sharon had an appreciation for Harper’s formidability and for her influence in the world of child abuse pediatrics. She began her career as a pediatrician in the U.S. Navy before leading a child abuse team at a hospital in Texas. In 2014, she became the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Safe and Healthy Children.

A certified child abuse pediatrician for almost 16 years, the 56-year-old Harper consulted on suspected cases of abuse for several Twin Cities hospital systems, testified as an expert witness in child abuse trials across the U.S. and lectured on diagnosing signs of abuse. She was also the vice president of the Ray E. Helfer Society, a national nonprofit organization for physicians who work on the medical aspects of child abuse and neglect, and she became its president in 2023.

Sharon, now 53 years old, was also well-respected. Originally from Israel, he came to the U.S. in 2003 to continue his medical studies. He began as a fellow at the University of Minnesota in 2006 and had been on faculty for 12 years. Specializing in infectious diseases, he became medical director of the university’s pediatric COVID-19 clinic and was a contributing member of the state Health Department’s Long COVID Guiding Council. Sharon was also a hospitalist, meaning he directed the care for admitted patients like Hank, coordinating with other doctors and specialists.

As the online February meeting progressed, it became clear to Sharon that, in a face-off with Harper, his medical expertise and the fact that he considered many of the people on the call to be friends counted for little. The lawyer noted that differing medical opinions could open the hospital or the doctors themselves up to a lawsuit. George added that the differences in opinions had also “made things difficult for particularly law enforcement.”

“I’m not a child abuse expert,” said Dr. Sameer Gupta, the chief medical officer of the hospital, on the call. “But, you know, my experience is this: Try to be completely aligned. That’s one story that’s coming from the medical team as much as possible, to avoid the potential for, one, litigation, two, to let the experts really drive the ship.”

Sharon became increasingly agitated during the call, shaking his head. He was angry that the conversation had revolved around protocols and the hospital’s legal liabilities, rather than Hank’s care.

“I think I did the best any doctor can do at that point in making sure that my patient is getting the best care while I’m not trying to hide any potential abuse,” he said during the meeting, the video of which he shared with ProPublica. “I felt very uncomfortable that CPS are showing up unannounced and taking two children away from the parents without having a discussion with the doctors who take care of this patient. I hope no one expects me not to say something when that happens in front of me.”

But Harper seemed to suggest that Hank might have been seen by too many doctors, and that Sharon had interfered with her team’s ability to “frame” the case to CPS and law enforcement. She said she did not consider it her role to be concerned about what could happen to a family after a diagnosis.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “if I spent all of my time worrying about … what’s going to happen with child protection and foster care or the cost for the legal stuff afterwards, I wouldn’t be able to do my job.”

Sharon began to protest. He said he had been reading the scientific literature on abusive head trauma and found it unconvincing, a conclusion more and more doctors were coming to. Harper cut him off. “If I spent two weeks reading the literature on COVID, would you consider me as qualified as you are?” she asked. “I’ve been doing this for decades.”

Gupta abruptly shut down the conversation. He said that Sharon’s plan to keep the family in the hospital was the “wrong decision and will never, ever happen again,” and then he ended the call.

As the screen went blank, Sharon let out a long, deep sigh. Though disturbed and frustrated, he did not yet realize his actions on behalf of Hank and his family would affect his career. Over time, Sharon came to see Harper as the main driver of a campaign to get him to fall in line with the child abuse team.

“She’s very black and white, right and wrong, no gray area,” he said, “which is not the way to do medicine or pediatrics.”

Harper did not respond to requests for comment. She and a spokesperson for University of Minnesota Physicians, which is the clinical practice for the university’s medical school faculty, also did not respond to a detailed list of questions. But the spokesperson wrote that the Otto Bremer Trust Center for Safe and Healthy Children, as it is now called and which is led by Harper, provides “trauma-informed medical care and psychosocial support while addressing research, prevention, advocacy, policy and education.”

“When healthcare providers and community organizations refer patients to CSCH, the team only makes decisions about diagnoses and subsequent medical care based on expert assessment of medical evidence (e.g., medical history, physical exam, lab and radiological findings, input from other medical specialists and information provided by caregivers),” the spokesperson added. “Further investigations and legal determinations are outside of our team’s scope.”

A spokesperson for Fairview Health Services, which owns Masonic Children’s Hospital, said in a statement that although Harper is an employee of University of Minnesota Physicians, “we obviously take these concerns seriously and are actively reviewing the matter.”

“Our highest priority is the safety, dignity, and wellbeing of our patients and families — especially in moments of crisis. We are aware of concerns being raised regarding the conduct of a University of Minnesota Physicians (UMP)-employed provider who practices in a UMP-led clinic within the M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital,” the spokesperson added. “We are in close communication with our academic partners and are evaluating any steps we may need to take to preserve the trust our patients and families place in us.”

Harper’s arrival in Minnesota coincided with the fallout of a high-profile tragedy: the 2013 death of 4-year-old Eric Dean.

Dean lived with his family in sparsely populated Pope County, in west-central Minnesota. According to an investigation by The Minnesota Star Tribune, teachers and caregivers reported signs that Dean was being abused to child protection workers at least 15 times before his stepmother threw him across a room, causing injuries that would kill him. She is in prison serving a life sentence.

In response, then-Gov. Mark Dayton signed an executive order in 2014 creating the Governor’s Task Force on the Protection of Children. The next year, along with a slew of other reforms, the state Legislature created a $23.35 million grant to give counties money based partially on the number of open child protection investigations.

She’s very black and white, right and wrong, no gray area, which is not the way to do medicine or pediatrics.

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