Call Kurtis Investigates: The hospital recorded my newborn son as a girl
SACRAMENTO — Darnell Dumas says after having two girls, he finally got his son.
"This was my first son," he said. "So I was extremely happy and excited to know I'll have a junior. I'll have a twin."
But the official birth record was riddled with errors. Dumas says that right after little Endi was born, he corrected the staff at Sutter Medical Center Sacramento for misspelling his son's middle name. It's the same as Endi's mom and his two older sisters: Do Vale.
Weeks later, Endi's Social Security card showed up, missing the space.
"I think it's egregious," Dumas recalls saying. "I think it's disrespectful."
He says he alerted the hospital to the error and waited for the birth certificate to show up. It wasn't until Endi's birth certificate showed up six months later that he realized the mistake continued. Do Vale was spelled DoVale on Endi and his mom's names. It also listed Endi as a female.
"I can kind of understand the name. Kind of. Not really, but just a little bit. Maybe 2%. I understand they messed up on the name, but the sex, though?" Dumas said.
In the eyes of the official government record, Dumas has three daughters.
A December trip for Endi to meet relatives in Brazil was off. Dumas can't apply for his son's passport until the birth certificate is fixed. He needs Social Security to reprint the Social Security card.
He wants Sutter to fix both errors and admits he was frustrated in November when he showed up to the labor and delivery department. He says they called the police on him. He recorded a video of the encounter.
"The issue is they don't want you going inside the property," the officer is seen telling him. "Looks like you were trying to bypass their checkpoints and you're being hostile towards them, so that's the issue, OK?"
Dumas says Vital Statistics, the agency that oversees birth certificates, told him any changes would be an amendment attached to the original birth certificate instead of issuing a new one.
That means his original document would always show Endi was born a girl.
"He may have to deal with this or, you know, explain this for the rest of his life," Dumas said.
We reached out to Sutter, which claims that when it was notified of the mistakes shortly after Endi's birth, it fixed them.
"This is an isolated clerical error which was resolved by Sutter Health nine months ago. We regret that neither Sutter nor the parents, who verified the accuracy of the birth certificate following the baby's birth, caught the initial error before the record was finalized."
Dumas insists he did point out the inaccuracy in the hospital right after Endi was born. It appears some of the frustration involved how long it took the state to process Sutter's paperwork to fix the errors.
After we got involved, the state issued Endi a new original birth certificate, not an amendment. The names and his sex are correct. The state never did answer my questions about the delayed processing.
With the corrected birth certificate, Endi got his passport and got to meet his relatives in February in Brazil. He has also received a fixed Social Security card.
