The Child Abusers

There are some things we all feel the state needs to do for us - protect our children, for example. Do you know what happens when you fall into the hands of the Child Protective Services? I didn't. When a friend of mine did, I thought the experience was so chilling and thought provoking that I would post it here.

One evening I get a phone call from a friend of mine who wants to talk about something that has made him so angry he has been fuming for days. He was walking into the grocery store with his wife when his 3 year-old son, Kylan, threw “the mother of all tantrums.” He decided to put his son in the car and waited next to the vehicle while the kid screamed and cried. His wife went shopping on her own. Realizing that she didn’t have her wallet, my friend said to his son “Are you ready to come in?” and got “No” as an answer.

He walked inside the store; gave his wallet to his wife and started back to his car. A woman outside the store confronted him and said, “How can you leave your child crying like that?” He explained that Kylan was having a tantrum. Then she told him that he “can’t leave him unsupervised,” at which my buddy told her to mind her own business. Guess what? Ten minutes later an Eagle cop pulls up to his SUV in response to a complaint about child abuse.

My friend does not abuse his children. He is the most patient father I know, but now has to spend 20 minutes talking to the cop while his friends, neighbors and clients walk by him going in and out of the store.

“Are you OK?” they ask.

“Yes, I’m being detained because I’m abusing my child.”

A couple of people stop and offer to be character witnesses. The cops say they are supposed to question the child, but he is now asleep in the back seat, and they forgo this requirement and exercise the prerogative of using their own judgment. They release my friend.

His story got my attention because I recently became a father, and I fully intend to spank my kids if they repeatedly disobey me – even in public. I am certain that it is not a matter of whether, but when, I will have a conflict with some stranger in the supermarket when I give my child a spanking in public. It’s going to happen. I am supportive of the motive behind child abuse laws, but it makes me uncomfortable that some Good Citizen will unleash the police power of the state on me by simply making the accusation that I am abusing my child. I don’t trust other people’s judgment enough to grant them that power.

It happened to the woman who comes over and helps us with housework and baby care. She had told her kids for the third time not to crawl under the clothing displays at a store, and on the fourth offense grabbed them by the arm and gave them an open hand to the backside. A stranger came up to her and threatened to call the police.

She replied, “Wait right here. I’m going to go home and get their social security cards and their clothes, and I’ll let you raise them for the next five years since you obviously want the job.”

The Good Citizen left without calling police, and apparently without taking her up on her offer.

Of course, I could always make myself feel better by reporting other people to the state. I had the opportunity to be a Good Citizen in a situation where a call to 911 might actually have been appropriate. The other day I was standing in a grocery store line when the Hispanic mother in front of me told her daughter that they had to stop shopping and get back to the car because el bebe está en el carro solito. The guy in front of them understood Spanish and turned to say, “You should not leave your child alone in the car.”

“Grandma is watching him,” said the woman, and then when the man’s back was turned she faced her daughter and made a “Shush” motion with her finger to her lips.

Now that made me mad. Not only did this woman have the poor judgment to leave her baby unattended in a car on a hot day while she went shopping, she told a casual lie to avoid getting caught. I though about taking out my cell phone and threatening her, in Spanish, with a phone call to the police. Then I stopped myself. What good would it do? If she is an irresponsible parent, what can we do to change her. Am I cynical to say that you cannot change people like that? Would I be a hypocrite to make the phone call?

I’m not sure. There is a world of difference between the action of my friend in Eagle and the action of a woman who leaves her baby in the car unattended (solito) on a hot day while she and her daughter do their grocery shopping. The problem with enforcing these laws is making the distinction between the two.

Sometimes the unintended result of well-intentioned legislation is that competent, caring parents have to undergo humiliating interrogations when they have simply make a mistake. You cannot appreciate the feeling of anger and intrusion until you experience it. I want to share with you a “child abuse” story from a friend who lives in San Diego. He and his wife had an experience with the Child Protective Services of the state of California that can best be described as Orwellian, or perhaps Kafkaesque. 

It began one day when his wife turned her attention away from her infant son while he was on the changing table, and while she was not looking he rolled off the table and fell to the floor. OK, that’s bad. Once they are old enough to roll, you just need to train yourself to keep one hand on them while they are on the changing table. You can turn and look away when changing a one month-old baby, but not a three month-old baby. They grow up fast! That was a mistake on her part.

The operative work here is “mistake.” She did the wrong thing, and her son got a broken femur from the fall. They took him to the emergency room, where he was placed in a cast, and the hospital did what they had to do – they alerted the child protective services.

Here is what happened next, in the words of the couple who experienced it:

The wife:

On the Monday following the incident we were treated to an unannounced visit from Child Protective Services. When the worker came into our home, she sat at our dining room table and requested that our three year-old leave the room. I asked my daughter to please go to her play kitchen and make me and our “guest” some snacks.

 The social worker then began asking about the incident, all the while taking copious notes.

-         Did we ever hit our children to discipline them? No.

-         What type of discipline do we use for your children? Time outs and loss of privileges.

-         How do you discipline your infant? What? You do not discipline infants!

-         Has anyone ever inappropriately touched our children? Absolutely not.

-         Do you have enough food in your home to feed your children? Of course.

After questioning me about matters unrelated to the accident, we got up from the table. I thought the interview was over. Then she asked to question my three year-old. (I thought, “That is crazy. She is three!”) I got our daughter and asked her to sit with our “visitor” and answer her questions honestly. I was told I was not allowed to speak during the interview with my daughter.

The social worker began by asking if Lilly saw the accident with our infant son, but then went on to ask every conceivable question relating to many forms of abuse:

-         Did she have enough to eat?

-         Was she ever hit by anyone in her family?

-         Do mommy and daddy fight?

-         How do mommy and daddy fight – with fists or with words?

-         Does she know what drugs and alcohol are?

The social worker then showed our daughter a picture of a nude doll, and asked if she knew about all of the body parts: arms, legs, eyes, nose. Then she proceeded to “nipples,” “vagina,” and “bottom.”

She asked our daughter if anyone had ever touched her in any of those private places, and our three year-old giggled and said in a stage whisper, “I do.”

After a ridiculously long and futile interview in which my imaginative daughter said that mommy and daddy kick each other when they fight (what?), the social worker asked to see where the incident to our son occurred. A complete tour of the house ensued, including looking in our refrigerator to see if we had enough food; photographing our son’s crib; photographing our son  on the changing table; measuring the height of the changing table off the floor (34 inches); and poking her head into the third bedroom/office.

After our little tour, she asked to come back at 5:00 pm to speak to our six year-old. When she came back, she went through the same questions that she asked the three year-old, then interviewed my husband.

All in all the process was completely invasive and made me very upset about the words and knowledge this woman brought into our home. We have always had a protective bubble, if you will, around our children. We’ve been able to protect them from the more sordid things in the world, and I feel as though CPS brought the knowledge of these things into our home without our consent.

The husband:

The account my wife provided is accurate. Thankfully, she gave our kids a “cover” explanation for the woman’s presence by telling them that she was a police officer who was in charge of going to all houses with little kids and making sure the house is safe.

She questioned me in a separate room from my kids and wife. She asked if I had ever exposed the children to pornography; if I drank; and if I used drugs. She asked me if I had ever spanked the children, and I told her I had spanked our three year-old on one occasion. She asked if I had spanked her on her bare bottom. I had not. Then she described the correct way to spank, citing that it must occur only on a clothed bottom and that spanking was legal except toward infants.

I asked if she had children, and she replied that she didn’t. She grew up in Cambodia, and had a very detectible accent. When I asked about her tenure with CPS, she told me she had been working for them for the past nine years. I have to prejudice toward her race or her country, but I have to believe that success in her profession is dependent upon her ability to detect subtleties in the behavior and speech of those whom she interviews. I would imagine that her abilities in that area are diminished, since English is her second language and our culture is dramatically different from the one in which she spent her young life.

Her next set of questions centered on my relationship with my wife. She wanted to know if I trusted her, and if I accepted her explanation of how our infant son was injured. She was perfectly mannered and cordial, even pleasant. After all of this was over, just before she left our home, our six year-old daughter asked if she would like to stay and join us for dinner.

I have so much anxiety and anger about the whole experience that I really don’t know where to begin in describing what this encroachment on my family’s lives and rights meant to me. I am furious that the state is legally capable of denying one’s free speech in regulating what your children are exposed to while they are interviewed. In our case, this did more harm than good.

Our home is neat as a pin and our fridge is full. Luckily I mowed the lawn the day prior to the interviews. Appearances aren’t everything but they sure tell a keen investigator most of what they can’t learn from questioning people – especially people with something to hide. I am fortunate to provide well for my family, and my wife is a stay-at-home mom. It occurred to me that this might not have gone as well for us had we been financially challenged, or if our circumstances made us appear vulnerable. That is scary and disgusting.

These incidents are tied together by a common thread: the realization by decent people that we are not able to prevent the erosion of our freedoms, and that we are not living free. The state is now literally responsible for watching over your children. Your freedom and privacy was not a concern of those who created this legislation. They simply wanted to stamp out child abuse, and now we live with the unintended consequences of handing enforcement power to social workers and Good Citizens.

(I just love it that when asked if her parents touch her in her private places, the daughter responded, “No, but I do.” Kids are not stupid. They know the purpose behind the questions, and I just love it that the state social worker was slammed by a three year-old.)

Not only are these laws applied indiscriminately to anyone accused of abusing their child, we but we have so trivialized the concept of abuse that we no longer differentiate between someone giving their kids a beating and someone giving their kids a time-out.

So, what should our policy be toward child abuse? Well, it should be the same as it is: to take steps to prevent it. What should change is the police-state tactics and the complete disregard for the family’s privacy and dignity in the process of the investigation. In Eagle, Colorado, the police took one look at the kid sleeping in the SUV and decided the forego the “interview with the child” that was mandated by legislation. It had become obvious to them that the kid was not abused. They considered the situation and decided that my buddy had simply left his child in the car while the kid threw a tantrum; that he posed no threat to his kids. They interviewed him and left.

Such point-of-application judgment demands a certain degree of common sense from law enforcement and social workers as well as the flexibility of the state apparatus to allow (or even encourage!) the use of such judgment on the scene. The story told by the couple in California is a testament to the absence of good judgment being applied in the field – at he point of application of the law. That is the point where good intentions break down and law enforcement produces ironic consequences: the people most vulnerable to the harsh measures of the state are the ones with steady jobs, permanent addresses, listed phone numbers, and a predisposition to tell the truth. The bad actors know they have something to hide and will take steps to avoid being discovered, or will simply lie.

You cannot legislate around this! Respect for procedures is inherent and necessary for the function of bureaucracies. They hire people based on civil service exams (and minority hiring criteria); train them and put them to work. The people in the field are the point of contact with the citizens, and their duties are very proscribed. That is, their ability to use their own judgment is deliberately restricted by the state. They are expected to follow procedures and ignore whatever their common sense tells them. They are as de-humanized as the parking meter enforcement officer who refuses to look up from his ticket machine to make eye contact when you explain that you just went inside for some quarters.

The intrusion of the state into your home is just another example of what we have given up, increment by increment: is our privacy, our sense of individual responsibility, and finally our dignity. What we have achieved is modest. In fact, since there is no “control group” for this massive social experiment it is impossible to say whether we have achieved anything at all over what would have been achieved by simply increasing people’s awareness of the dangers of their own actions. That is what existed as a check against bad behavior in previous generations: the authority of the family and the community to direct the actions of its members. People were expected to use good judgment. Now we are all just citizens, and the government is our parent.

What does the future hold for us? Trust in the innate responsibility of parents requires that you perceive that the citizens around you are responsible. In this sense a democracy is based on trust! Decentralization of freedom and control are predicated on trust. When we no longer trust our fellow citizens to act responsibly, then we voluntarily (even self-righteously) hand over our privacy and freedoms to the state. I concede that if the citizens of the Nanny State cannot conduct themselves as adults, then there is a valid argument for treating them like children.

My brother is also a recent parent. (Well, about two years into parenthood. It doesn’t feel “recent” to him.) He was made to watch a video on child abuse before the hospital in Salt Lake City would release his infant son. He actually thought it was appropriate. He said, “Do you know how many kids in their late teens were in the room with us to watch the video? Those young parents are kids who got married so they could have sex. They’re clueless!”

He felt the intrusiveness of having to watch a video telling him never to shake a baby was worth the social good done by educating those around him.

Let me offer my own situation in which the intrusion of child protective services into the family is justified: when the mother tests positive for illegal drugs. Maternal drug abuse is often discovered throug blood tests while newborns are still in the hospital and are "often" reported to child protective services, according to an Associated Press article. In this case, the mother has already commited child abuse, and deserves to be monitored by the state.

According to a study co-sponsored by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Maryland School of Medicine, about 1 in 50 infants is either neglected or abused. By far, most cases involve neglect, and not physical abuse. They filter out "neglect" from new parents who simply don't know how to feed or care for an infant, and focus on more severe neglect: failure to meet a child's basic needs for housing, clothing, feeding and access to medical care.

The study ran for one year, between 2005 and 2006. During that time period, the researchers counted more than 91,000 infant victims of abuse and neglect. About one third were newborns.(1) So, if we want to use the services of the state to better protect children, why not mandate blood tests of mother and child be taken and shared with the state if they reveal substance abuse by the mother - no right to medical privacy here!

Then send the child protective service people on a regular basis to monitor the addict mother while the child is an infant - or longer. That is a justified intrusion into the family, and a bonafide act of protection for a helpless child.

If there is any justification for the Nanny State it is that the citizens of the Nanny State have become children, and need to be watched. What we are learning is that nannies don’t just feed and comfort us. They scold and punish us. And they watch us while we play. Apparently that is where we have arrived, and for some of us it is warranted. For some of us it is not. Now it is time for the state governments to make an effort to discriminate between the former and the latter.

(1) Mike Stobbe, The Smallest Victims, Associated Press, (from The Spokesman Review, 4/4/08, front page)