Texas couple reveal in new podcast how their five-month-old son was ripped away from them after they were falsely accused of child abuse when he fell out of a lawn chair and fractured his skull

A Texas couple who were falsely accused of child abuse after their infant son fell off a lawn chair and fractured his skull have opened up about how the boy and his sister were ripped away from them amid a botched investigation by Child Protective Services. 

Melissa and Dillon Bright came forward to tell the story in their own words in a new podcast from NBC News and Wonderly called 'Do No Harm'. The first two episodes were released on Tuesday. 

The heart-wrenching saga began on July 18, 2018. Melissa was watching her five-month-old son Mason and two-year-old daughter Charlotte play with a sprinkler in the front yard of their home in Tomball, a Houston suburb. 

When it came time to head inside and start dinner, Melissa went to strip her kids out of their wet swimsuits so they wouldn't track water into the house. 

She set baby Mason - who was too young to roll over, let alone crawl - on a lawn chair and went to wrestle Charlotte out of her suit. 

Seconds later Mason let out a sickening shriek, and Melissa looked over to see him lying on the pavement. 

The baby was rushed to a hospital, where Melissa and Dillon, who had been at work when the accident occurred, explained what had happened to doctors and social workers. 

A team of doctors soon arrived at Mason's hospital room and informed Melissa and Dillon that their son had suffered not one but two skull fractures - one of which they believed had come from an earlier injury. 

The terrified parents insisted that Mason had never been seriously hurt before. What they didn't know was that those doctors were with the hospital's Child Abuse Pediatrics unit.

The CAP team sent a report to Child Protective Services with the conclusion that Mason may be a victim of abuse - setting in motion a months-long legal battle that almost saw Melissa and Dillon lose custody of their kids forever. 

Melissa and Dillon Bright came forward to tell the story of how Child Protective Services falsely accused them of child abuse and almost took their children permanently in a new podcast from NBC News and Wonderly called ' Do No Harm'

Five-month-old Mason Bright is seen at Texas Children's Hospital on July 19, 2018, the day after he fell off a lawn chair and fractured his skull in two places 

The 'Do No Harm' podcast is narrated by Mike Hixenbaugh, a national investigative reporter for NBC News. 

In his introduction, Hixenbaugh states: 'This is a story about what happens when our efforts to save the most vulnerable among us, is what puts them in danger.'

Episode one begins with Dillon and Melissa recounting how they met at engineering school at the University of Georgia in 2008, when she was 18 and he was 25. 

After graduation the pair moved to the Houston area, got married and immediately started trying to get pregnant.  

'I had always wanted to be a dad,' Dillon said, describing how his upbringing in a big family made him want to start one of his own. 

He and Melissa recounted the joy they felt when they welcomed daughter Charlotte in 2016 - and their anxiety when they came to the realization that it was their sole responsibility to keep her safe.   

Within a year their family grew with the arrival of Mason. Melissa left her promising engineering career to devote all of her time to her kids. 

'My job wasn't my passion, and my passion was yet to come. I just knew that being a mom was the dream,' she said.  

Episode one begins with Dillon and Melissa recounting how they met at engineering school at the University of Georgia in 2008, when she was 18 and he was 25

The Brights welcomed daughter Charlotte in 2016 and son Mason in early 2018

Her tone and Dillon's changed dramatically as they launched into the next part of their story, in the summer of 2018.  

'Life is great and everybody's happy and healthy and then just like that - it's a complete nightmare,' Dillon said.  

On July 18 of that year, Melissa took Charlotte to see her first movie at the theater before they came home and turned on the sprinkler in the front yard for some relief from the sweltering heat.  

When it came time to head back inside, Melissa set about getting the children out of their wet swimsuits. She took off Mason's swim-top first and then looked for a place to put him down so she could tend to Charlotte. 

She didn't want to put him on the hot pavement or the wet grass, fearing it would irritate his skin, so she placed him on his back on a chair. He was too young to hold himself up, so she assumed he was safe. She was wrong.   

'I just heard - all of a sudden it was just this blood-curdling scream,' she said on the podcast, speculating that the baby may have kicked his feet and knocked himself off.

She scooped Mason up off the pavement and dragged Charlotte inside, where she noticed a bump appearing on Mason's head.  

Her first call was to Dillon, who was at work. He said he assumed she was going to ask him to stop by the store on his way home. He was wrong. 

'Never in our history together have I ever heard my wife make those kinds of noises, to be in such a panic,' Dillon says. 

'It's just ... this menagerie of yelling and screaming and crying. All I could hear through her sobs was "Mason", and then "head, he hit is head". Then she goes "calling 911" and she hung up the phone. I jumped in the truck and drove home as fast as I could.'

Melissa said she was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher when Mason suddenly stopped screaming.   

'I didn't know what was going on,' she said. 'I didn't know was my child dead? Was my child passed out? What do I do when a child passes out? I don't even know what the 911 operator was asking me at that time or telling me what to do. 

'All I know is that after shaking his body a little, he finally started screaming again and I felt so relieved. At least the screaming was better than nothing.' 

TIMELINE OF THE BRIGHTS' CPS SAGA 

July 18, 2018 - Five-month-old Mason is hospitalized after he fell two feet from a lawn chair and hit his head on the pavement outside the Bright family's home in eTomball, Texas

July 19, 2018 - Mason is transported to Texas Children's Hospital's main campus in Houston after scans showed he fractured his skull and had fluid building up around his brain. A team of doctors with the Child Abuse Pediatrics unit ask Mason's parents Melissa and Dillon if he'd suffered any previous falls, as his scans showed two skull fractures. The parents deny any previous injuries. 

July 23, 2018 - The CAP team submits a report to Child Protective Services expressing concerns that Mason's injuries were inconsistent with his mother Melissa's account of the fall. 

July 24, 2018 - Melissa and Dillion agree to a 'parent-child safety plan' outlined by CPS that requires their two-year-old daughter Charlotte to stay with her grandparents in Baytown, an hour from their home. Mason joins Charlotte two weeks later after being released from the hospital. 

August 14, 2018 - Melissa and Dillon, frustrated about being kept away from their children, meet with CPS officials Lavar Jones and Niesha Edwards. The parents request that they be allowed to move their children to another relative's house closer to where they live. Edwards agrees to start the transfer process. The same day Mason is hospitalized again for a second surgery. 

August 28, 2018 - After not having heard about the transfer request for two weeks, Dillion calls Jones and says that he will be bringing the children to their Tomball home so Mason can recover properly. Jones says: 'Okay.'

September 14, 2018 - Melissa and Dillon contact Jones about a second opinion they received from a doctor who said Mason's injuries were in fact consistent with what Melissa described. 

September 18, 2018 - Jones texts Melissa asking: 'How is Mason?' Melissa replies with several photos of the boy sitting up and smiling, saying he's doing well. Jones writes back: 'He looks really good!'

September 19, 2018 - Jones files an emergency petition asking for custody of the children, charging that they were in 'immediate and continuing danger'. The judge grants the petition, and Mason and Charlotte are taken into foster care. 

October 8, 2018 - Following a three-day hearing over the custody petition, Harris County Judge Mike Schneider rules that CPS officials 'knowingly misled the court' by claiming that the children were in danger and orders they be returned to their parents.      

Dillon sped home at 90 miles per hour, not knowing what he would find when he got there. 'It's a terrifying thought because all you know is something is wrong, your child is hurt, and that's it,' he recalled. 'Never in my life have I ever felt that powerless.'

The paramedics arrived soon after Dillon and rushed the baby to a nearby branch of Texas Children's Hospital.

The panicked parents watched as Mason was hooked up to machines by six or seven doctors. 'I kept saying: "Please be okay, please be okay" over and over again,' Dillon said. Then, suddenly, he fainted. 'I was so scared I didn't know what to do, I forgot to take a breath,' he said.  

When Mason was taken for tests and brain scans, Melissa finally sat down and told Dillon what had happened. Asked by Hixenbaugh if he was upset with Melissa, Dillon replied emphatically: 'No, no, no, no.'

'I've got a son who's plugged up to a bunch of stuff, and a wife who immediately is just in pieces because she somehow thinks she caused this - no amount of conversation or anger or anything from me would be worse than what Melissa was already putting herself through,' he said. 'All I could do was just sit beside her and hold her and hug her and tell her I loved her.'

Doctors came back with the preliminary results of Mason's CT scan, which showed he had a fractured skull and bleeding around his brain. The damage was so extensive that he needed to be transferred to the neurology department at the main campus of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.  

While they waited for the transfer, a social worker came to ask Melissa some questions, including about what had gone on before the accident and whether she had been stressed or angry recently.

'I thought it was just someone checking in on me,' Melissa said. 'It didn't raise any red flags for me. I had no intention of hiding anything, so I just told her to the best of my ability what transpired the couple hours beforehand.'

When she came back from the conversation and Melissa asked if she had anything to worry about, Dillon assured her that everything was fine, that the questioning was routine. 

'I told her not to worry, she's not interrogating Melissa,' Dillon said. 'They're probably just trying to gather all of the facts so the doctors have all the information they could possibly need to help Mason.'

Foreshadowing what would come next, Melissa added: 'I was very, very naive, even at this point. It did not dawn on me that they were accusing me of child abuse.'

Mason was transferred to the bigger hospital that night, which brought Melissa and Dillon a new sense of relief that their baby was in good hands. 

Hixenbaugh, who spent years reporting on health issues, narrated: 'Texas Children's is a place where parents come for miracles. 

'But as the Bright's discovered, the hospital also prides itself as a leader in another, lesser-known specialty: one focused on saving children's lives, not from disease, but often from their own parents.' 

The specialty Hixenbaugh was referring to is called Child Abuse Pediatrics , which centers around detecting obscure signs of abuse and working with law enforcement to determine how they happened. 

A brain scan from Texas Children's hospital showed fractures on the front of Mason's skull and on the back. Doctors said it was unlikely that both fractures occurred from his fall 

The morning after his accident, Mason had another brain scan. A new team of doctors came to his room to explain the results to his parents. 

The doctors introduced themselves as members of the CAP care team. Melissa and Dillon didn't know what CAP stood for, and they were too focused on their son to ask. 

Dr Kwabena Sarpong pulled up a 3D image from the brain scan, first pointing to a line on the top left of Mason's skull, which he said was from the fall. 

Sarpong rotated the image and focused on another much smaller line on the back of the skull, saying he believed that second fracture occurred before the first one and asking if Mason had fallen before.

Dillon said in that moment, he realized that the doctors didn't believe his wife's side of the story.   

After their meeting, Sarpong typed a preliminary note in Mason's medical records that would have an immense impact on CPS' handling of his case.

'I was very, very naive,' Melissa said of her early conversations with CPS investigators. 'It did not dawn on me that they were accusing me of child abuse'

'The presence of multiple skull fractures is concerning for a non-accidental skeletal injury. The single impact fall would not be expected to cause both injuries,' he wrote. 

A few hours later two men from CPS arrived at Mason's hospital room and told Melissa and Dillon that they thought the baby may be a victim of abuse. 

Melissa remembered telling the men: 'Thanks for being an advocate for children. We understand your job's hard. You know, children need an advocate. We have no problem giving you what you need to know.'  

'I'm like, okay, that's fine,' Dillon recalled. 'They have to put this case together. But I knew that Melissa had done nothing wrong.' 

'Let's get through this part of it so you guys can see this for what it is, that it was an accident, and we can get back to just focusing on Mason's recovery.'

One of the CPS investigators, Lavar Jones, took Melissa into a room to question her. She fought back a creeping panic by telling herself that all she had to do was tell the truth and she'd be okay.  

'I hate that our family's involved in this, but I understand that we've got to go through the process because the process is what exists to protect children,' she said. 'We just thought it was something we had to do. In order for them to be able to protect all of the other children, not ours.'

Episode one ends there - with the parents confident that CPS investigation would come to a swift conclusion in their favor. In episode two, everything changes.

Mason is seen in the hospital covered in bandages in the days after his fall. Social workers and CPS investigators repeatedly questioned Melissa about what had happened - apparently refusing to believe her story that it was an accident

It opens with Melissa describing her first meeting with Jones, the CPS investigator assigned to the case.  

Jones tells Melissa that he will need to go inspect the Brights' home and speak with their friends and family about how she and Dillon are as parents. He also says that they need to come up with a 'parent-child safety plan' to follow as the investigation continued. 

'They were telling us that someone was going to have to move in with us - neither one of us were allowed alone with either of our children,' Melissa said.   

Meanwhile Dillon was growing increasingly frustrated at how the CPS procedures were interfering with his ability to focus on his son. But he remained cooperative, saying: 'We'll answer their questions, we'll follow their procedures, and we'll come out on top of this on the other end.' 

The following day Jones called the Brights and told them to bring Charlotte to the hospital for X-rays to determine whether she'd suffered any injuries in the past. 

Melissa and Dillon were in disbelief, unable to understand why their daughter's health was being called into question. 

The mother watched as Charlotte sat in an X-ray machine for an hour, screaming and crying. The results showed she did not have any prior injuries.  'That was horrific, she did not need to experience that,' Melissa said. 

On July 23, five days after the accident, a doctor with the CAP team faxed a form to a CPS supervisor named Niesha Edwards, which drew the following conclusion: 'While the reported fall could account for one of the skull fractures, it does not explain the other fracture or the extent of Mason's intracranial bleeding.'  

It added: 'If non-mobile babies with unexplained injuries are returned into the same care environment in which unexplained injury happened, there is risk for further and more severe injury.' 

Under a question on the form asking: 'Is this child's condition consistent with abuse and/or neglect?' a doctor wrote 'abuse' and circled 'yes'.  

Edwards called Melissa hours later and informed her that they were changing the parent-child safety plan in light of the CAP team's report. Melissa and Dillon would no longer be allowed to keep their kids at home. Charlotte was to be sent to Dillon's parents house an hour away in Baytown immediately, and Mason would join her there as soon as he got out of the hospital. 

The parents protested the change, questioning why Charlotte was being removed when her X-ray showed no injuries, and when everyone CPS spoke to had only good things to say.   

'We have reports from the doctors, we have everything we need,' Edwards said, according to the Brights. 

'It was unbelievable to me at that point that it had even got that far,' Dillon said. 'That's when I started questioning: "What kind of investigating are you really doing?" I just couldn't understand how this could be getting worse.'  

Melissa and Dillon said they didn't understand why the CPS investigators were so adamant about Mason having suffered child abuse, despite conflicting reports from doctors 

Mason had to undergo a second surgery because he couldn't stop crying, exacerbating his wounds. His parents said the reason he was so upset was because they were not allowed to be with him, per the CPS 'parent-child safety plan'

Mason spent the next two weeks in the hospital, undergoing surgery to relieve pressure in his brain. When he was released, he was taken to his grandparents' house in Baytown. 

The days that followed were a nightmare for the family. Dillon had to stay behind in Tomball for work, while Melissa stayed with a friend near the grandparents since she wasn't allowed to spend the night with her kids. 

'That first week back was just complete chaos,' Melissa said. 'It was really hard on the kids - especially for Mason. He had been in the hospital for so long that he had gotten off of his routine, he wasn't sleeping through the night.'

The doctors had instructed the Brights that keeping Mason upright and calm was crucial for his recovery, because crying could irritate his wounds and cause more fluid to build up. If that happened, he would need another surgery. 

But without his mother to comfort him at night, Mason wouldn't stop crying, and his condition worsened. 'I wanted to be close when my son called for me, or Charlotte cried for Mommy,' Melissa said. 'And I couldn't be. It was devastating. The person it affects the most is the one person they claim to be advocating for, and its just so infuriating.'

'In what world is that the best choice for my infant son?' Dillon added. 

Fed up with the situation, Dillon asked to meet with Jones and Edwards to discuss a new plan on August 14. They were joined by Melissa and a few other family members.

Dillon recorded audio from the meeting, in which he and Melissa can be heard insisting that being apart is not the best thing for their son. The parents presented their own research on cases of misidentified child abuse, as well as doctors' findings that were inconsistent with that conclusion in Mason's case.

But Edwards wasn't budging. In the audio she is heard saying: 'Mom, baby, dad, one house? That's not an option.' Edwards claimed she understood that the Brights were frustrated with having their kids so far away, but said: 'All of those things are inconvenience.' 

'We as an agency we have to take every precaution to make sure this child is safe. I'm not a doctor, no one I work with is a doctor, so we have to go on what's being reported to us. It cannot just be based upon how you for your family is, and these different reports given to you guys.'

Edwards did, however, agree to start the process of moving the kids closer to home and placing them with their aunt and uncle - Bobby and Dolores Jester - within the next week.

The Brights considered that to be a small victory, because it would mean Dillon could see the kids during the week.  

The Bright family are seen playing at home in footage from an NBC special last fall 

After the meeting ended Melissa made the long drive back to Baystown with her kids. When she got there, she noticed that the scar on the back of Mason's neck was leaking fluid - indicating that he would need another surgery. 

They spent the next week in the hospital. By the time Mason was ready to be discharged, the Brights still hadn't heard whether the Jesters had been approved to keep the kids in their home. 

Tired of waiting, Dillon texted Jones and said he would be taking the kids to the Jesters' anyway. Jones replied: 'Okay, that should be fine.'

But the following day, Jones called and said that they still needed one supervisor's signature to sign off on the Jester transfer. 

Melissa and Dillon were livid, but they brought the kids back to Baytown and waited for the signature to come. Three days later, they still hadn't heard anything. 

'I'd had enough,' Dillon said. 'I called Melissa and I said nope, doesn't matter, we're not going to voluntarily comply with their investigation at the expense of my son's recovery anymore.  

He said he told Jones: 'You obviously are not listening to what we're telling you, to what the doctors are telling us. My son is coming home.' Jones replied: 'Okay.'

More than a month after the accident, Melissa, Dillon, Charlotte and Mason were finally reunited at home. 'It was all just hugs and kisses and tears of joy because everybody was home,' Dillion said.

They settled back into a routine that felt almost normal and began to think that the CPS had moved on - until Jones texted Melissa asking: 'How is Mason?'   

Episode two ends on that cliffhanger, with episode three expected to be released next week. 

The rest of Melissa and Dillon's story will be described in forthcoming episodes of the 'Do No Harm' podcast. Mason and Charlotte pictured above with their baby sister last year 

NBC News and the Houston Chronicle detailed the entire case in a feature story last year, which outlines what's to come in the remainder of the podcast series. 

After they brought the children back home, Melissa and Dillon sought a second opinion from Dr Julie Mack, a Penn State radiologist who specializes in child abuse cases.  

Mack concluded that both of Mason's fractures could have come from the same fall, contrary to what the Texas Children's team said. 

The Brights told Jones about what Mack had said on September 14. Four days later he texted asking Melissa asking about the boy's recovery. 

Melissa sent back several photos of Mason sitting up and smiling and reported that he was doing well. 

'He looks really good!' Jones replied. 

The following day Jones filed an emergency petition asking for custody of the children, charging that they were in 'immediate and continuing danger'. 

The judge granted the petition, and Mason and Charlotte were immediately taken into foster care.  

Jones had left several key details out of his petition, including Mack's opinion and another doctor's determination that Mason may have suffered from a bleeding disorder that exacerbated his injuries in the fall. 

Jones and other CPS officials were forced to explain those omissions at a court hearing in early October. After three days of testimony, Harris County Judge Mike Schneider issued a stunning rebuke of CPS. 

'It is not possible to look at the facts and imagine that the agency actually felt there was any sort of urgent need for protection to remove the children,' Schneider said.

He accused CPS officials of having 'knowingly misled the court' and returned Mason and Charlotte to their parents.    

Weeks later, Schneider ordered the state to pay $127,000 to cover the Bright family's legal fees.  

Tune in to 'Do No Harm' on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the Wondery App in the coming weeks to hear the rest of the Brights' story, in their own words.