Parent Attacks Dentist After He Puts Screaming Child In Controversial ’Body Bag’ Restraint

Very few children like visiting their dentist, but one little girl in Georgia has more reason than most to hate her routine dental check up after a dentist deemed her “uncooperative” and strapped her in a controversial “body bag” restraint called a “papoose board.”

The Daily Mail reports that Smiles-R-Us dental practice in Carrollton, Georgia, run by Dr. Jamey Chung, is partial to using what’s called a papoose board. The purpose of the aforesaid device is to restrain uncooperative children and give the dentists complete freedom to work on their teeth.

Although the papoose board is controversial, it is not illegal, and Smiles-R-Us insists it always has the parents signature on consent forms before it uses the device to carry out dental work on unruly children.

The father of the girl, James Crow, insists that not only did he not give his written consent for the dentists at Smiles-R-Us to use a papoose board, but that they failed to notify him of their intent to use the controversial restraining device on his little daughter.

Mr. Crow’s daughter, Elizabeth, was taken to the Smiles-R-Us dental practice to get her front teeth pulled in what he believed would be a routine procedure.

As the concerned parent, alongside Elizabeth’s grandmother, Evelyn Crow, sat anxiously in the waiting room, he heard the terrible sound of his child screaming.

“We were sitting out in the waiting room and all of a sudden, we heard somebody screaming.”

Instinctively rushing to her aid, the concerned parent was told by an assistant at the dental practice he was not allowed to see Elizabeth. Ignoring the petty nonsense that governs such inane bureaucracy and compelled only by a father’s instinct to comfort his daughter, James Crow burst into the operating room and found to his horror, his child strapped to the table with no one to attend to her.

“I could see my kid in the body bag just strapped down to the bed, I couldn’t handle it.”

Elizabeth’s grandmother was livid and furiously demanded why they used the papoose board on her granddaughter, when she thought they were merely going to give her laughing gas, to which they replied, “she was not cooperating.”

Mrs. Shaw now believes there should be a law restricting dentist from using restraints of any sort.

A spokesperson for the Georgia Board of Dentistry told WSBTV that there are no rules against using restraints though there are warnings that they could inflict possible physical or psychological harm.

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