"If we get down to the bottom line, there is no clear-cut definition," said Dean Tong, who wrote "Elusive Innocence: Survival Guide for the Falsely Accused," after being jailed and then spending 10 years and $150,000 to clear himself of abusing his young daughter. Now a forensic consultant in thousands of false-accusation cases across the country, Tong told me that even most police officers are not well enough trained to interpret the law, let alone photo lab employees. Tong said that when facing the slightest doubt, law enforcement officers "err on the side of the child," noting the potential results: "I see families stripped and ripped apart in the middle of the night."
America has one of the absurdly strictest set of laws for sex offenses against minors, Economist had a great cover story about this some weeks ago. Problem is, since politicians know proposals for stricter laws bring in votes and no sane politician would ever propose a relaxation in these laws, they get stricter every year.
On the other hand, the US has one of the most sexualized tweens and teen-agers I have ever seen, go to the Mall or the local movie house on a Friday and you would be shocked at how girls dress (and how their parents let them dress like this). And if that doesn't shock you, watch the movie Thirteen.
Back in the 90s I ran across an interesting survey. In America more people were privately concerned about excessive violence on TV than excessive sex. But most thought that their neighbors were more concerned about sex than violence. And therefore found it easier to publicly express their concerns about sex than violence.
As to your question, laws and solutions vary widely by country. And other countries have their own problems. (See, for instance, the Catholic abuse scandal in Ireland.) But in general other countries have laws which serve the same purpose as US laws, however with less draconian details. For instance England and Canada have copied US legislation for registered sex offenders. However they do not seem to have implemented the sort of geographic rules on where they can live that lead to the infamous tent city under a bridge in Miami.
So what did the other countries, that have less-strict laws, do?
It’s not a very nice answer but I think they have less direct democracies and delegate many of the nitty-gritty details of the law to experts. That’s also why there is no death penalty in Europe.
"That’s also why there is no death penalty in Europe."
Really?
My theory was always this: Frontier cultures need death penalties because they don't have the resources to keep very many people imprisoned for very long. The same is true of nomadic cultures, which explains a lot of things in the Bible. (The Old Testament has a long list of crimes, all of which are punishable with stoning. Which is sensible for a nomadic culture wandering around a region that has a lot of rocks lying around.)
Vast parts of the US were a frontier culture until maybe 100 years ago (less in Alaska, more in Massachusetts). Europe has been settled for centuries. Which one do you predict would give up the death penalty first?
Abolishment of the death penalty is very recent development (last executions: France 1977, UK 1964, Germany 1949 – arguably a special case) and public opinion is not fundamentally different between Europe and the US.
There is a interesting (but expensive) book about this topic [1], from the blurb:
Movements to abolish the death penalty cannot be understood without a grasp of the dynamics of public opinion on capital punishment, which is driven not by rational consideration but by what cognitive psychologists call 'social intuitions,' deeply rooted attitudes which are resistant to change. European death-penalty abolitionists quickly realized the futility of trying to change public opinion on a mass scale, and instead devised strategies to accomplish abolition despite lingering public support for the death penalty. Pointing to the importance of political structures that allowed European abolitionists to bypass public opinion, this study assesses the prospects of the 'European model' of abolition in global perspective.
I'm not so sure about that. I would assume that these laws mostly command support from those who consider themselves "Law and Order" types. They're often conservative, but I think it crosses ideological lines pretty well.
I would suggest these organizations are more liberal thinkers where the child is better off under Government supervision.
The Bible is pretty clear that the parent should raise the child. The Bible is really against "Caesar" taking a big part of your life for example 'spare the rod, spoil the child'.
>While verses in Proverbs arguably align with the sentiment,
Your wording here suggests that the argument for the sentiment is a weak one. I don't think that is born out. All verses in Proverbs with "rod" in them in NIV.
# Proverbs 10:13
Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks judgment.
# Proverbs 13:24
He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.
# Proverbs 14:3
A fool's talk brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them.
# Proverbs 22:8
He who sows wickedness reaps trouble, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.
# Proverbs 22:15
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.
# Proverbs 23:13
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.
# Proverbs 23:14
Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.
# Proverbs 26:3
A whip for the horse, a halter for the donkey, and a rod for the backs of fools!
# Proverbs 29:15
The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.
It saddens me that for every ridiculous story like this, there is someone out there who really thought that trying to bring the case was a good idea.
Some things have improved in recent years. The incidence of bad therapy leading to false memory syndrome has been reduced, and with it the rate of false accusations. (There are also now improved odds for abused kids to be able to get information on what abuse is actually like, rather than getting detailed, unrealistic fantasies.) Others are worse. For instance in Miami the rule that sex offenders have to live at least 2500 feet from any school means that about the only place they could live was under a particular bridge. (As of April this year they have been transferred elsewhere, but which elsewhere that is I'm not sure. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle_Causeway_sex_offen... for more.)
I would be the last to trivialize abuse or its very real problems. But there is a world of difference between 50 year olds going after prepubescent kids and 19 year olds who dated 16 year olds. And there is little to be gained from treating them all like lepers. Certainly less than could be gained if we, for instance, took some of the energy that goes into following up on almost certainly bogus reports and instead put it into improving the foster care system.
> there is someone out there who really thought that trying to bring the case was a good idea.
Really? Sounds more like there's some cynical jerk with no sense of ethics or boundaries who gets their jollies by randomly victimizing normal families with the excessive powers bestowed upon them by paranoid CYA legislation and an army of deranged ideologues who see abuse everywhere.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle: "Someone who really doesn't understand what his job is does some work in an attempt to get a promotion."
Most likely: someone whose continued employment depends on turning a certain minimum percentage of reports into criminal charges/convictions. Busting actual child abusers who have experience with the system is likely much harder than setting up innocent people who don't understand what's going on, so this would presumably be an easy case.
I'm very close to people who were saved from really horrible situations by state intervention. But then for them, foster care was hardly any better until they were adopted.
The state taking my kids is actually my worst parental nightmare--even beyond all the accidental and criminal bad things that could happen. I'm a very good parent (you'll have to take my word, I guess), but I'm not conventional. And I know all it takes sometimes is a little misunderstanding.
I think rear-facing car seats kill more infants than they save. How many children survive a car crash only because they were facing backwards should be weighed against the number of children who die each summer because the parents forgot them.
If the child is front facing, your rear-view mirror will be filled with your child's face. But imagine the child falls asleep in a rear facing car seat after you have been up all night with them. It happens every summer to good parents.
Horrible story, and I totally empathize with their situation. yes, the US is practically insane sometimes in how they deal with sexuality and minors, and yes there's a history of witch hunts in this area. all horrible.
That said, they did make 2 very big mistakes, and if they hadn't done either or both of them, none of the rest would have happened. first, they took pictures of the kids naked. two, they let those pictures get into the hands of strangers, ones who can then misinterpret and/or be legally obliged to do certain actions which could start a witch hunt. These people knew they were innocent, that's fine, but the problem is that from a stranger's POV, what they see is that two adult men went into the forest with some some kids, some of the kids got naked, they took photos of it. Connect the dots. It paints a bad picture. They were incredibly naive to have not realized this ahead of time.
But yes, we have a horrible system, and we need to find some way to make it better so we can protect children while at the same time not persecuting innocent adults. I'm not quite sure how we can do that.
My parents had childhood pictures of me, developed through the local grocery store, completely naked aside from a few layers of mud and a huge grin on my face. My teenage self might not have appreciated the opportunity to grandstand in such a manner quite as much. (I honestly thought I'd found and destroyed all of the copies. My parents were much sneakier than I gave them credit for.) My adult self thinks it's all rather funny.
Almost every other child I grew up with had "nekkid pictures" of them, taken by their parents: bathing, having done something foolish or amusing, or just generally running around the house like kids do.
Your post paints you as a reasonable person, and that actually terrifies me: a reasonable person shouldn't see an error in judgement here. These were parents doing what parents do, taking pictures of their kids doing what kids do. Proud parents, possibly thinking, "we'll embarrass the hell out of them when they're 16". (I may be projecting a bit of my father here.)
We're shaping a society that's cynical and distrustful, and it starts with reasonable people associating behavior like this with phrases like "they should have known better".
I didn't say we want to live in a world like this. I'm saying this is the world we live in. A reasonable, non-naive person would think twice about taking pictures of a kid naked, if they had any knowledge of the current state of society & laws in the US. This position should not terrify you. If there's no upside to it, but a pretty significant downside, then don't do it. Exercise willpower.
To put it another way, it's like running across a highway at rush hour. Why do it? Upside is a brief thrill (if you survive). Downside is you die horribly. Conclusion: don't do it.
The position of the laws being used in this way should be terrifying to you, however. This was waiting in line at an ice cream station, it's been made into a highway at rush hour with automated turrets and trigger-happy assault-rifle-wielding idiots patrolling.
It is deeply terrifying that we should not just self-censor completely innocent acts, but that you think it should be second nature to any "reasonable, non-naive person".
Avoiding completely normal behaviour because of a fear of constant surveillance and being turned in by those around you? This does not strike you as completely f*cked up?
What is "normal" is subjective and varies by person and society. Would you agree with that?
Some people don't think it's normal to want to photograph children naked. Others do. Some may not think it's abnormal, but on the other hand think it is not wise. Clearly, you think it's okay to do. Or you just think it is not unwise, or should not be banned. Those are each distinct nuanced states of mind on the matter. That's fine.
I don't see where all this "being terrified" angle is coming from actually. I guess I have a different understanding of the word terror and terrifying.
Having an awareness of the state of one's society is a useful thing. To be aware of possibilities, and make choices accordingly I'd argue is a smart thing. It's not being fucked up, it's being wise and pragmatic. As was shown in the OA, in theory everybody is innocent until proven guilty. But in practice, especially regarding this particular issue, it's effectively the opposite. Clearly we want to change that. But the world is not like that at the moment. Should we try to make it better? Yes. Can we make it better? Possibly not. Should we do the wisest thing in the meantime? You'll probably have a happier life if you do, but it is up to you whether the tradeoff is worth it. From my perspective, there's almost no upside and therefore no tradeoff to consider. YMMV. But do not be "terrified" of my position. Be terrified of a giant flying shark in the night or something. But not something like this. :P
"As was shown in the OA, in theory everybody is innocent until proven guilty. But in practice, especially regarding this particular issue, it's effectively the opposite."
This state of affairs is merely scary.
It is your blasé acceptance of this state of affairs that is terrifying.
But in practice, especially regarding this particular issue, it's effectively the opposite.
Because it's For The Children™. And, For The Children™, our legal system is turned upside down, causing huge amounts of damage, including damage to The Children.
It's terrifying because your position is that one shouldn't do something that is entirely harmless and innocent, for fear that you will be branded for life as something evil. It's even more terrifying because your position appears to be tacit acceptance of that situation.
Some things should not have to be worked around. Some things are wrong, and should be decried. A situation where parents are scared to photograph and document the growth of their families is exactly wrong, and should exactly be decried.
You can crack jokes in the airport about bombing planes, and carry bundles of wire in your luggage, and fight the system. Jokes are harmless and innocent, and you should be allowed to make them. Stand up against the injustice.
Or, you could simply not do those things and get on your flight and on with your life.
I believe it's important to pick at least one fight with the establishment on principle in your life. The largest check on government power is when responsible citizens stand up for what's right. The government can bring a lot of leverage vs. a single person, but spread the issue around and things break down. A great example would be traffic tickets from a traffic camera; with a little effort you can cost the government more to prosecute the case than they collect from it.
PS: I would hate to be the (edit: completely innocent) person that tries to stand up to CPS, but create a blog, document everything. Hell, insist on a warrant, it's a constitutionally protected right etc.
I see your point, but pretending to bomb planes has no upside or possible reason behind it. It is not comparable to taking pictures of your kids having fun.
Not quite the same thing. Taking photos of your children running around having fun in that state of clothing is probably a fun, proud moment for a parent, documenting their joy in their family.
I have to agree that it's necessary. It is fscked up that people have to take that attitude, yes, but if you don't want to end up in a big mess, it's a legitimate position. People are hysterical about sexual abuse of children. I don't know what it is. They are all manipulated into it one way or another, I don't really get it.
I agree that this is sad. I agree that parents should be able to take pictures of kids running around and playing, even if the children are naked.
But the thing is, especially if you're taking these images to a third party for development, you don't want to give anyone any reason whatsoever to spring this kind of thing on you. Maybe someone at the drug store is best friends with your ex-wife's mom and they think that they can use this to finally put you out of the picture. Maybe someone at the drug store is just utterly unreasonable, as seems to have been the case here, and sees completely innocent photos in a bad light. If you take these on your digital camera and your disk gets confiscated in the course of a search warrant and the police find images of nude children, even if they are completely innocent images, do you think that they won't use that to help their case? Cops assume that they wouldn't be investigating someone if that someone were actually innocent and have a history of vindictiveness, dishonesty, and general nastiness that they justify by that belief.
So please understand that no one is advocating the position that you shouldn't be allowed to record images of your own children doing funny things/acting cute/whatever while naked. We are just saying that it's the best way to stay out of trouble here.
We're shaping a society that's cynical and distrustful, and it starts with reasonable people associating behavior like this with phrases like "they should have known better".
The problem is that the cynicism and distrustfulness is directed toward the wrong things. There should be more cynicism toward the busybodies and the wolf-criers. We need more innocent until proven guilty, which means not hassling people just to find something, anything to support a case against them.
There are photos of my parents, sister and I when we were little on a beach in the middle of nowhere all in our Birthday suits. Living in a desert environment for the first half of my childhood meant my sibling and I viewed clothing as very much optional.
Nudity isn't inherently sexual, culturally we have made it so.
I don't agree that they made zero mistakes. Not exactly that I would call it a 'mistake'- that implies they were hiding from something from the start- but why, why were there photos of children drinking beer? Especially considering their children are 3 and 8 yo? Even in cultures much much more loose about alcohol, most don't give it to children in the single-digit age range. Hell, even if there were no laws and regulations on the stuff, I'd be extremely uneasy giving a child that young alcohol, unless it was just a taste. At 135lbs, half a beer can make me woozy if I haven't eaten. Small children are 1/2 to 1/3 of my weight.
As I read this I thought to myself "if you've bought a disposable camera that will need to be professionally developed why are you taking naked photos of your children?". Use a digital camera or skip the nakedness.
It's like me (a pasty faced white geek) taking my sports car out for a cruise around Bay Shore and Hunters Point here in San Francisco (big crime, gang and drug activity). Sure there is nothing illegal for going for a drive in any part of the city, but I'm going to get stopped by a police cruiser on the suspicion of looking to score drugs or prostitutes.
Even if I'm not doing anything illegal whatsoever, it's naive to think it isn't going to raise suspicion and investigation.
Similarly, a friend and I were up in the mountains (halfway between our houses) once late at night on the side of the road to talk about some heavy stuff in our lives.
Pair of police cruisers pulled over completely unprompted and confronted us, ran our registration and driver's licences, and gave us a lecture on speeding & racing.
I don't blame them, and in fact I'm happy they were doing that, especially as they weren't assholes about it. They are trying to fight the death rate up there, and as they can't be everywhere at once, they were just doing all they could to proactively prevent. I think it'd be totally unreasonable to get upset over that. Sure, it'd have been a bit nicer of an evening if the cops didn't pay us a visit, but we were giving off some warning signs (being there late in coupes) so they checked us out, end of story.
In other words: no it bloody doesn't paint a bad picture. It paints a picture that is completely regular in 999 out of a 1000 cases. If you think it paints a bad picture, then you've already been convinced by them to such an extent that you feel their reasoning is justified. It isn't. The clerk was wrong to suspect anything from the photos. Completely, utterly, wrong.
first, they took pictures of the kids naked. two, they let those pictures get
into the hands of strangers, ones who can then misinterpret and/or be
legally obliged to do certain actions which could start a witch hunt.
Right, and you think my parents, and all those others, developed their own photos when I was running around butt naked on some beach 28 years ago? It's a cultural change for the worse; nothing inherent in the photos.
the voting system is broken if my comment was brought to -2. just because someone may disagree with the comment doesn't mean my karma should be lowered. that just encourages groupthink and political correctness. not cool.
to fix i propose allowing only a small number of trusted admins to be able to bring a comment below 1.
No he did not, this is not court, you have no right to due process. Your rights are considered secondary to the rights of the children given that you are in question you can not by nature be the child advocate. The DCF (whoever your states agency is) takes that role. So they get to decide if a lawyer is present or not for child questioning, etc.
All you really can get from a lawyer in this situation is advice and legal counsel if they decide to bring charges as well as a agent to act on your (not your children) behalf.
It is a nightmare where they have you and your lawyer over a barrel until you can catch them up and get them to relent.
I have no idea if this is settled law or not, but in this instance where the DCF is causing irreparable harm to both the children and the parents it seems a court's intervention could at least be asked for, i.e. file an injunction on the investigation or something to that effect. I'm not a lawyer but I don't think I would feel right just sitting back and being a passive message-passer for the DCF while they destroy my client's lives.
It is complicated and I don't remember all the in's and outs, you can try to get in front of a judge and have him rule that you can provide funding for an independent 3rd party lawyer. He cannot be the same as your defense. But you have to show cause which I remember my lawyer saying that it was hard to do. My lawyer in the end was right you just have to show them that you are not easy to pick on and they will move on. They need to make their numbers and if they spend too much time on you, they miss other opportunities. It is a war of attrition in which you have a severe psychological disadvantage.
Everyone should read Franz Kafka's The Trial. This story and The Trial depict the helplessness anyone can feel with our legal system, or any big bureaucracy.
ESR's got a new post up http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122 about what he calls "Kafkatrapping", making unfalsifiable claims against people as a form of "moral" bullying.
Wait until some enterprising district attorney confiscates your hard drive, surmises you frequent HN, subpoenas your voting history from pg, finds this thread and examines which anti-governement/pro-common-sense comments you up voted.
Everything you say (and/or write) may be used against you.
>Wait until some enterprising district attorney confiscates your hard drive, surmises you frequent HN, subpoenas your voting history from pg, finds this thread and examines which anti-governement/pro-common-sense comments you up voted.
But don't worry, because the web is the future of computing and one day all our information will be stored in giant central databases outside of our control. Isn't the cloud great?
(And by the way, "common sense" is not always the same thing as "good sense".)
Sadly, my privacy is probably slightly more protected from such things on this highly monitored Army owned machine running on a secured and monitored network, than on my home computer. The DoD actually seems to care more about PII (Personally Identifiable Information) more than most other organizations, I suspect in large part because the people setting the regulations are also susceptible to them.
This is tremendously disturbing, but according to the article pretty common. It's a tough line.
On the one hand, nobody wants children to suffer. If at all possible, every child should be protected from abuse. I think the key, as the author elaborates on, is education. Knowing the difference between a crazy hippy family and pedophiles seems like common sense -- but if you, as an uneducated clerk at a crappy CVS in the middle of nowhere, saw something that offended your sensibilities and seemed perverse... Without education things like this will happen again and again. Once something like this gets into the bureaucratic pipeline it becomes an unfortunate problem of due diligence.
It's really common wrong-headed idea, and I suspect at its heart it's a fundamental flaw of democracy.
The idea is that if A does bad thing B, all you have to do is pass a law against doing B, and A will stop doing B.
But that's not how it works in practice. Instead, you introduce this third character C, who goes out looking for As who might be doing Bs, and potentially does a lot of damage in that search.
That damage isn't taken into consideration by the people who simply want As to stop doing B. But people, as a collective electorate, are like a simple-minded 6-year-old, who are promised something by their parents, and they clap their hands in glee, unable to imagine the downsides.
In practice it just doesn't work very well sometimes. I think it's better to risk letting more child abusers off the hook, than potentially ruining the lives of decent parents like these.
This was a particularly clear cut case where the parents had done absolutely nothing wrong.
That is unusual (at least in my experience) and, yes, we need to avoid these cases.
But how do you treat the 8 year old who makes accusations about her father; how much do you have to believe before investigating him? How certain do you have to be that she may be lying before dropping the case? This is the main area of unjust investigations remaining (at least in the UK) and it is troublesome how to find the safe medium.
If it's hurt adults or let children be hurt, I don't know if I can agree with you. Children are much more powerless than most adults, and the strong should always stick up for the weak.
We had "a run in" with Child Protective Services about 10 years ago. The charge: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (symptoms medically caused; a long story). The "advocates" at CPS had me and my wife (in hospital having just delivered child #2) tried and convicted immediately. Only, I think, thru my self-advocacy directly to the head of pediatrics at the county hospital where my child was being held for examination, resulted in the case being resolved in our favor within a few days (in contrast, I could have talked to the bureaucrats until I died w/o making the slightest headway). Due process? What's that? Various lawyers I consulted advised me to not even hire a lawyer (imagine multiple lawyers saying _that_!) because the law was so stacked against parents, and so completely protective of the CPS bureaucrats, that it would be an utter waste of money with no hope of lawyer-aided "victory".
Miraculously we got our kids back in very short order, however the bureaucrats wouldn't give us the slightest scrap of documentation that the event had ever taken place (and this remains true til now). And needless to say, we received no apology either (at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp guards).
I have nothing good to say about the arbitrary, condescending, totalitarian bureaucrats/"advocates", or the (CA) legislators who wrote such one sided laws ("for the children", no doubt) giving these petty tyrants their obscene powers. I guess many reading this will think "necessary collateral damage by wonderful, diligent state employees pursuing the greater good"; all well and good until _you_ are the ones in their crosshairs: then we'll hear what kind of tune _you_ sing about the glories of the state when you are deprived of due process among other things.
(at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp
guards)
Quoted for truth. This is not an invocation of Godwin's law, but the closest possible analogy, as these bureaucrats make the exact same repugnant decisions someone like Eichmann made. They fully well know they ruin the lives of many innocent folks; at least half the cases turn out to have been nothing. The problem is not 'the government' or 'society'. The problem is our neighbors: citizens like you and me, not realizing they have to question what they do in the light of each individual situation, not thinking for themselves or not having the moral fiber to act according to those thoughts.
These horror stories are not solely an American problem: there are plenty of similar European stories. However, the American stories are by far more extreme, as both the punishment and the immediate social consequences are worse. Not only the bureaucrats are like concentration camp guards: the teachers that immediately distrust you and the neighbors that won't let their kid play with yours anymore are equally guilty of 'guilty until proven innocent'.
Yes the hysteria in Europe is quite similar. I think that part of this has to do with the fact that whenever a case of child abuse arises, and it's shown that the social services did not do enough to protect the child from harm, there's a huge media circus, legal cases brought against the council, heads of department sacked and so on. So from the social services point of view false negatives can be prohibitively costly, whereas false positives rarely if ever make the headlines.
Recently a dutch study indicated that the false positives are actually by far the majority of the cases and on top of that plenty of child abuse goes unnoticed.
False reports out of revenge (for instance, between divorcees, jealous neighbours or oither idiots) are also very common, and the damage done to families because of that is significant.
The cure seems to be much worse than the disease here.
Friends of ours had a 'visit' of the dutch equivalent of the 'service' (I use the term lightly) who kept on suggesting that there must be something wrong. When the guy got up to make coffee the woman said 'you can tell me now', as though she was a victim too. Unbelievable, the way these people push their way in to peoples lives, guilty by default and if you are very very lucky you might get to keep your kids at their say-so.
The problem is not 'the government' or 'society'.
The problem is our neighbors: citizens like you and me...
I fail to see how my neighbors caused this problem (aside from demonstrating a tendency to vote for legislators who themselves had a latent tendency to write the laws creating the bureaucracy which assailed us). The problem is in fact those legislators (and a system that offers minimal checks on the legislation they pass into law), and an apparent collective swoon they fall into, where they think that every "issue de jour" needs a new law in response, and every law is a good law (and more laws, new laws, are better than no new laws) so they spend all their time writing and passing laws, thousands upon thousands of pages of new laws (and often vote to pass same w/o having read the laws being voted upon), many of which require new bureaucracies to enforce. Basically they are busy with their long term project (driven to some degree by the constant cajoling of "advocates" of all stripes who wish to inflict, by rule of law, their point of view on everyone) of legislating a straitjacket for each citizen. Do you like yours?
the teachers that immediately distrust you
Even aside from our CPS experience, this is true: the classroom is their kingdom, and any parent who dares to question a teacher, or come across with an attitude other than "we worship the ground you walk on" (with smiley faces all around), is going to have trouble. NB: we were (parents) "in the special ed system" (another fine bureaucracy ... not!) so got to "get up close and personal" in ways most parents do not. Our ultimate solution? Home Schooling. I had assumed that switching to this schooling mode would, if not simply impossible, at least be a bureaucratic nightmare, but to my complete surprise, here in CA it is so easy to switch to Home Schooling (this improbable result is thanks entirely to HS groups fighting and winning a number of court cases), and you are (can be if you choose) completely cut loose from the government education bureaucracy.
You're probably thinking "aha! He's Home Schooling, therefore he's a Fundamentalist Christian therefore he's a loony tune, and I can scoff at him"; wrong; I am areligious. My bible, if any: http://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0380...
As a colleague who lived through conflict in Serbia once told me of a conversation he had with an opposition soldier with a gun.... long story short - the soldier said "I have no choice, I'm just following orders"... and my friend said "YOU are the only person in this situation who DOES have a choice - YOU are the one holding the gun."
IT's all too easy for people to forget they are individuals and capable of individual choices (which yes, have consequences.)
It surprises me that when it comes to bureaucrats causing harm while "just doing their jobs" no one has mentioned the Milgram experiment yet ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment ).
I had a similar run in with DCF, not for child pornography but for accusations of child abuse. I helped out a high school friend who had become a heroin addict (I had no idea what I was getting into), by letting his family and himself live with me while he tried to recover. It ended up that this was a common scam with him and his wife and they use a sob story to get friends to help them out and once they wear out their welcome they move on to the next friend. They would exploit their two girls to make you feel bad about putting two little girls out on the street. This worked very well on me.
Anyways, we finally had had enough and we asked them to leave. I notified his brother of this an his brother had had enough as well, fearing for his two nieces the brother called DCF on them and started an investigation in an attempt to get the girls and provide them some stability (they where in and out of school, watched their father do drugs, and eventually watched him OD - more on that latter).
So, after that the crazy wife calls DCF on every family, that had kids, that they stayed with. So we end up getting cops and a DCF agent knocking on our door, conveniently at 11PM, a time when any dirt bag would be doing their nightly supply of drugs and we get this condescending attitude while we are being read a list of charges being levied against us. My father is there, because he is helping me install a wood floor in my living room and the DCF agent gives me a condescending lecture about unsafe environment for children (I answer well that is why we are doing it while they are in bed). She looked at me and asked what is going on here like it was some illicit activity.
They make us wake the kids up, and then they make them disrobe to see if they have any marks and take them on the back porch to ask them questions. Right before that, I asked if I needed a lawyer and the cop told me they are not needed in these situations.
Anyway, they told us we had to be at the court house for a urine test at 8AM the next morning. To which we complied after calling a lawyer once they left the night before.
In the mean time, I call the brother and tell him and his mother what happened. He, his sister and their mother calls the agent handling the case of his brother and tells her that their has been a false report that was used to victimize another person as a form of retaliation. He pretty much has to threaten the lady to contact the DCF agency in my town, which she finally does.
So, pretty open and shut right, nope. I ask our agent if she has been in contact with the (now network) of agents investigation false reports on everyone that has ever let these people stay with them and she tells me that she cannot confirm or deny it due to the fact that she has to protect the anonymity of the reporter but that our case was in active investigation, because they found items of concern in our house (If they provided half the case work diligence that they do to protect the anonymity of a random caller, we would have never been in this mess).
The items of concern was a pot pipe in the room that the family stayed in. I did not allow drugs to be used in my house and the brother clearly described the pot pipe to them as he had seen his brother pipe before, so there was no doubt that this pipe belonged to a known drug addict that lived in that room. Still no go, so now we are being investigated not for child abuse, as the original allegation claimed, but drug abuse, so they go through my medicine cabinet and catalog every pill bottle I have.
Then the drug test come back, and I come back positive for a controlled substance, Alazopram, I have had panic attacks since I was about 10 years old and have been under a doctors care for that long. They know this but feign like they don't.
They then decide to contact my doctor and volunteer the information that I am being investigated for drug abuse and then show up on my door to inform me that I will have to attend mandatory drug classes and enter a rehab facility or they will bring it before the judge. My l...
First off, I am so sorry for your experience that sounds completely terrible.
Second, was there nothing your lawyer could do, such as file an injunction against the DCF? Is there any way you can be compensated (in any way) for your experience? If there was would you take it?
The problem with that avenue is that this sort of agency is very vengeful and they have the power to make your life very miserable. So if after you've won your injunction they find half an excuse to 'intervene' again they'll definitely do so.
It's rare that I would advocate to just let it be but in this case that would seem to me to be the safest option. Pick your battles.
How is accusing them of negligence going to generate more evidence against you? If no-one stands up to this organization this sort of thing is going to continue to happen.
Absolutely, it's just that since they're not going to change their ways because of specific individuals taking action it is probably more effective (and less costly) to take this on by people that have no direct stake in the results. That means a platform that is widely carried instead of individual cases against individual persons or the entity as a whole.
So it doesn't mean that you shouldn't stand up, pick your battles literally means that you decide on the battleground and make sure they can't get back at you in some sneaky way that will upset your life in ways that you probably really wouldn't care about. See some of the other stories in this thread about how those things go.
It is different when you have kids. I don't know your situation (if you have kids), but the threat of taking my kids, trumps the need for social justice (just telling the truth). If I have to stand so be it, but I will turn tail and run when it comes to my kids and their well-being. Principals only go so far when it involves my kids. Because my principals tell me that it is my kids above all else. Fighting them risks my kids and that is not something I am willing to do.
It's really not difficult for them to find some violation that could be some kind of "dangerous" situation. Is every outlet in your house child-proof? Is every bookshelf, dresser, etc. secured to the wall so it cannot tip over onto a child? Are your toilet lids locked closed to a child cannot fall into them? There really is no limit to the things they can find.
Even worse, they can bring your children to psychologists and ask them leading questions that could lead to concerns about anything they like. DCFS can make your life a living hell if they like. And the more you piss them off the more they are likely to do just that.
"Even worse, they can bring your children to psychologists and ask them leading questions that could lead to concerns about anything they like."
I'm curious about this. In the original article, the writer mentions insisting that the interviews be recorded (and even then, they weren't).
Would you get in trouble via wiretap laws if you bugged your child during these interviews to hold a recording as evidence in the event leading questions are asked?
Bingo, I live in mortal fear of DCF and our next encounter (that how crazy the paranoia is). I pray every day, even now, that I am off their radar. I don't want anything to do with them. I don't want their money (I have exited 3 start-ups, I have enough, I am not FU rich but enough that I don't want to bring their heat). I just want to give them a wide birth and stay away from them.
I've seen these people operate up close (fortunately not regarding my kids, but kids of close friends) and they do more damage than good for all the 'best intentions' (assuming they have those).
What bugs me most is that these institutions seems to be staffed mostly with people that have no children, go figure...
I understand your predicament, I myself don't have kids but I understand what it would feel like to take your children away. But I also understand that you have time and a lawyer who already knew about the case. I'd ask him if there's a statute of limitations on this sort of thing. You may have a chance to fight back, and at least help sort out this unjust system.
I was born and raised in Florida, all of my family is in Florida we have been here for 13 generations. My grandmother's uncle was the first US citizen born in Florida after it became part of the US. I am the caretaker of my grandparents (the only reason I never moved to the Valley). Other than the Valley, Florida is the only place that I would want to live. The only way I would have ever considered taking action against them would have been to leave Florida and be out of their reach. It was really not an option given my history and my grandparents needs. They are an organization known for their retribution against individuals who try to oppose them. They are extreme powerful and not really an organization to be trifled with unless you are willing to endure some extreme hardships in the name of principals.
If I had taken action, it would have been less for money and more to force their hand at bringing the wife that made the allegations up on felony criminal charges. That is a personal vendetta of mine and would served no good for my family, so now I just let sleeping dogs lie. As I said, I give them a wide birth and try to avoid any contact with that organization.
DCF is a really problematic thing. I completely understand where you're coming from and we've had people close to us under false investigation from family services and it's a pretty bad gig. They act like everything you say is such an absurd lie and that you're just waiting for them to walk away so that you can start slamming your children into the floor again. It is really sad that they can't use common sense.
But at the same time, we've had people close to us exhibit a constant pattern of abuse with their children, including using and dealing hard drugs with the children present and leaving things like syringes lying around. We called DCFS and the investigation, as far as I know, has gone nowhere.
The woman still has her children because every time the agents show she happens not to have anything particularly incriminating in plain sight. The woman is a serial liar and manipulator and uses people wherever she can. She has many medical problems incidental of her drug use and the way she has treated her body and uses them to her benefit, playing the persecution card. We believe that she is constantly on the edge of sanity and has issues with schizophrenia. She is regularly beaten by her partners, and the children see this. She is always cracked out on legal prescription drugs, which she has a valid prescription to use, because as above, she has abused her body for years and now has serious problems as a result.
Her son has a disability that requires special attention. If he gets injured, he must be administered a booster immediately or he may die. This child is frequently unsupervised while his mother sleeps until 2pm and he runs around outside with kids who don't speak English, jumping off of balconies and stuff. He frequently misses school for a week or so at a time (she makes sure he appears at least once every 10 days, because the school people don't file a report until 10 consecutive absences). But apparently DCFS can't do anything unless they happen to appear at a time when the mother has drugs in reach or sight of the children, and the story is that heretofore they haven't seen this.
I sympathize that it sucks to be falsely investigated, but if you consider that there are people like those described above, who have become expert manipulators and liars to conceal and feed their habits, and DCFS has to investigate them too, you can understand some skepticism on the part of the agents.
Either way, it's a pretty horrible system. I don't really know the answer, but the current setup obviously doesn't work; this woman still has custody of her children six months later (the last time we had contact with them, her boyfriend, who speaks almost no English, called to say that the woman had been away for two days and asked us to take the children so he could go to work) and innocent people get harassed for years because of pettiness and retaliatory reports. Someone should try to fix this, though obviously it's a pretty intractable problem.
Individuals can know things without a formal investigation. Indeed, investigations are often based on accounts of what others already know about the matter. Investigations are held as a matter of public record so that the public can have documentation on the facts, circumstances, and conditions surrounding a case, which documentation is then presented in a trial where the people and/or their duly-appointed representatives pass judgment. The case is archived and subject to review by any interested parties at a later date.
An investigation is about due diligence and documentation. People can know things before a formal investigation is conducted. Suffice it to say that we had been quite close to this person and can affirm these things occurred with absolute surety.
I sympathize that it sucks to be falsely investigated, but if you consider that there are people like those described above, who have become expert manipulators and liars to conceal and feed their habits, and DCFS has to investigate them too, you can understand some skepticism on the part of the agents.
I am so bitter and cynical about the whole ordeal that I have come to believe that you can do anything you want want so long as you let them check off their list of social programs they ran you through.
The father and high school friend that I spoke of had a stand off with the cops (DCF was trying to enter the home to investigate his brothers call), in which he was brandishing a weapon on the front porch claiming that he was going to kill himself and his family if the cops tried to enter his house (he was protecting his drugs). When DCF got a hold of him and he agreed to "enter" their program, the judge released him into the care of DCF and the DA dropped the charges so long as he entered a facility (1 month). The brother (who is still a good friend and not a drug addict) called me so mad when he found out that because his brother complied that he would (a) not be getting the kids out of the situation and (b) his brother was being administered a cocktail of legal drugs in the facility.
In my situation this was the point that my sanity started to weaken. I know that they deal with all kinds of manipulators and these two individual where class acts when in came to manipulation, but man they had so many red flags with these people, meanwhile with us, they found a single pipe and neither my wife or I, tested positive for a substance other than one I had a prescription for.
Anyway, I am glad it has long been history for us, but from my experience if you jump through their hoops you can get away with murder. If you don't, they are going to come after you with everything they have got.
I would be half serious in saying that there need to be a support group for DCF false investigation survivors. It was the worst hell we ever experienced and we did not feel secure in our house for years. The article talked about the journalist being in live fire situations and it not being as bad, I believe it whole hardily I would have rather been in a situation where I was being constantly shot at, than to endure that again.
Your school system doesn't "file a report" until TEN CONSECUTIVE ABSENCES? That's negligent. In ours, a truancy report is filed and the police are involved after ten cumulative absences or tardies throughout the entire semester.
(I found this out the 8th time I managed to drop my kids off 1 minute late).
My wife informs me that the 10 days thing was because the child was in kindergarten. My wife had gone down to the school and talked to the teachers about the matter so she knows more about that than I do. Apparently kindergarten isn't considered a "real thing" or something. If the guidelines are stricter for 1st grade, and I hope they are, then hopefully there will be more involvement once the school year starts back up. The case is still open and DCF still drops in occasionally afaik, but I hope additional reports/complaints would cause the process to intensify and/or work faster. The kids are in danger every minute they are with that woman, so I will be pleased to see them removed.
The tardy thing is excessive. Getting a social work case opened up because you get out the door a couple minutes late is nonsense. It would be funny, and not at all surprising, if people who's kids are missing weeks of school at a time are having less trouble with the authorities; not giving a shit about anything is a good innoculation against social services, which is part of the tragedy of how these programs tend to work out.
"Think of the children" is not a good enough argument anymore. I used to work with social workers a lifetime ago, and the IRS-like you are guilty without a trial harassment is all too real. Combine this with it being a government position with bad metrics and some people who really got into social work to save themselves instead of their client, it is a recipe for disaster.
The biggest problem with reform is the unions and professions that make a lot of money on the current system. Until we can change the evaluation, metrics, and tenure; I really don't think there is any hope. My only bit of advice is to get a lawyer as soon as any possible dealing happen. Don't ever believe the "you don't need one" line. Your life and family is at stake and it is much easier to go after the people who were trying to help as opposed to the person getting "one more chance".
>I sympathize that it sucks to be falsely investigated, but if you consider that there are people like those described above, who have become expert manipulators and liars to conceal and feed their habits, and DCFS has to investigate them too, you can understand some skepticism on the part of the agents.
Saying that is the same as saying that they should have taken their children away just cause somebody claims you abused your children.
Do you want to retract that statement, or should I call DCF?
Promotions, or just having their superiors leave them alone. We have similar problems in France with quotas. Policemen are encouraged to arrest a certain number of people per year, or else. The problem here is that they are evaluated by the number of arrests (easy to assess), instead of the actual efficiency of their work (very difficult to assess accurately).
This evaluation method is of course as disastrous as lines of codes are for programmers. As a result, 1% of the French population has been arrested at least once last year. And this number is increasing.
Another example would be the number of American citizens that are on the Terrorist Watch List (I recall 4% [citation needed]). Official may get brownie points for putting one in, but never for putting one out. (Plus, there's might be an almost non-null chance that the guy might be, or know, a terrorist. Perhaps.)
Thanks. Big pet peeve of mine. Pretty much all state and local-run services have had a hatchet taken to them every single year for the last 10 years, and then people have the gall to get angry at the idea of paying people for public service, or advocate for cutting more teachers/cops/firefighters/social workers because quote "government is too big". Cut somewhere else, these people actually do things.
Maybe if these guys were funded to a reasonable, lean level (as opposed to complete funding starvation), we'd get better behavior. If you compare their funding level compared to, say, drug enforcement, it's clear that we're a little misbalanced. "Catching the crooks" always sells better than "keeping kids out of juvie so they don't become crooks", no matter which one is more cost-effective.
If they take the children away, yes, they get a "bounty" you might say for each child removed from a family. This is from that 1974 law mentioned in the article.
Once you understand the incentive system it all starts to make sense.
I guess that's proof positive that no good deed goes unpunished. What bothers me most about this story is that the organization that is nominally in charge of the welfare of children actually achieves the exact opposite by their behviour.
These people ought to be summarily dismissed for gross incompetence. I'm happy it wasn't me under investigation if there is one thing that gets my dander up it is abuse of power like that.
Maybe we should reconsider the laws, rather than the organization. If we didn't have a different standard of "guilty until proven innocent" that immediately kicks in when someone's accused of child abuse, the organization might be much more effective. Or less effective. I don't know. Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.
> Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.
The plural of anecdote may not be data, but if there is no data to support something and plenty to support the opposite you're allowed to draw your own conclusions. Not everybody approaches each and every issue in life as though it were a scientific experiment, and when your relationship with your kid(s) is at stake you're allowed to make some shortcuts that a respectable scientist would never make.
Using sentences like 'the plural of anecdote is not data' is an easy way to make it seem as though a discussion on a subject is not proper because, after all, all we have is anecdotes but the trick with such sentences is to apply them to the right subjects. This is not one of those subjects.
Being accused of child abuse, in the world that we live in is a thing with tons of consequences, the organizations are empowered by the laws that we've got. Reconsideration of those laws is a fine goal but for the time being very unlikely, unless there will be a dramatic shift in the politics of many countries.
How many times has social services taken kids away from parents who were actually bad? 100s of times a day? How many lives and/or psyches have they saved this week?
The problem is indeed the politics, because if you're looking for a campaign issue, you can just propose some ridiculous draconian system like "we'll take away kids immediately upon accusation". If your opponent predictably objects that that's unreasonable, he's SOFT ON CHILD ABUSERS. Bonus points if you accuse him of coddling criminals and put up posters with a scary looking black guy on it.
These social service workers have a tough job and if they don't follow policy to the letter, they'll get canned. They've also, as said upthread, probably dealt with a fair number of convincing liars and gone home from work knowing that those liars' kids are still being abused. Obviously the cases cited are out of control and obviously we have problems regarding sex offender laws in this country -- you can be haunted for years by taking a leak in public. But the majority of social workers are getting crap pay for a thankless job that at the end of the day, leads to less child abuse. Let's just remember that.
My 'anecdotes' are unfortunately all I've got, there are most likely instances where kids were taken away from parents that were 'actually bad', but I don't actually know of any of these.
I do know of one overlooked case but needless to say the child protection services are not interested in that one because daddy happens to be a fairly influential person in that particular community. But even in that case I'd wager the children are better of with their real parents than they would be in the hands of this 'service', which more often than not tosses children from the frying pan in to the fire.
Depending on where you're from it may be that the CPA or whatever it is called locally is doing a fantastic job, but so far I haven't seen any evidence of that and plenty of evidence of wrongdoing, powerplay, pettiness, revenge, allowing themselves to be used as a weapon between adults, messing up children's lives, messing up parents lives and in general doing a shitty job of it.
Politics doesn't even enter in to it, that's just the enabling element, the people that make up these institutions are a very large part of the problem, if they did their job right within the law as it is laid down at the moment the bigger part of the problem would go away.
The laws set their mandate. DSS or whomever is operating according to the laws that have been passed. If the law is reactionary, then it's their job to be reactionary. If the law is lax, it's their job to be lax.
As far as the people being the problem, well, I won't ever claim any organization is made up of entirely perfect people. But I'm not lining up to do that job, and you're clearly not, either. So in light of that, unless you're volunteering to do a better job, it might be worth considering that many of those in the job are doing what they can with what they have.
I have had something similar, someone called "CPS" (Child Protective Services) who came over and told us that our 1 month old child might crawl into my computer cables.. The challenge is that a 1 month old doesn't crawl or do much really. We lived in a studio apartment, turned out her real desire was for us to move. That appeased the social worker for some reason, this was 14 years ago luckily my father was around and he figured out what the social worker wanted because she kept threatening to take our 1 month old son. It was pretty insane.
Everyone has to be registered... It is a function of Government they don't want people here that that they don't know about including newborns :) So all must be registered.
How did you manage to stay calm and respectful in the face of all the condescension and threat of losing your children? Since my son was born, I've observed my own protective tendencies really ratchet up. The few times I believed he was in real danger, all other concerns fell away, and removing the perceived danger was the only thing that mattered to me. I worry that were I to find my house invaded with people searching my stuff, accusing me of abuse, treating everything as evidence of guilt, the urge to crack some some heads might become overpowering. Of course, I rationally know that's the worst possible thing to do. But in the heat of the moment, the cerebrum doesn't always prevail. How did you keep your cool?
In the article the authors writes about being on a ladder and loosing it. That was a really hard part of the story to read as I remember that exact moment when I started to fade and the exact moment when I crossed the line. I would be foolish (and afraid) to openly talk about my thoughts and private actions during that period. On that subject, it is best left at; in my opinion, I was further gone in my mind then the author seemed to be. It may be that he fears talking about it as well for fear of charges or another investigation for making threats. This experience leaves and indelible mark and leaves you looking over your shoulder for the boogy-man.
but seriously just like the author stated, my lawyer was the only thing that could pull me back into sanity. His slow calm voice logically deducing my actions and the outcomes would allow me to see the checkmate I was in and that any of those actions would be selfish (only make me feel better) and bring my family more harm than good. He would talk about my family being abandoned via my actions. Those words hurt more than knifes given the situation, thinking about your kids and wife left alone to deal with it (whether from you sitting in jail or worse) really cures you of those kind of thoughts.
EDIT: my wife reminded me that I did have one episode. We have an ice maker in our fridge that if you put it on crushed ice it will jam up due to poor design. Anyway the DCF agent is talking to me and I am trying to get ice, one of the kids put it on crushed so it is jammed, I go to the drawer to get an ice pick and start break up the ice. The DCF agent has got up from her seat and is walking towards me and is accusing me of all kind of crap, I am starting to raise my voice, keep in mind the fridge door is in between our views of each other. She continues on and at this point I am screaming at her and I slam the door and have an ice pick in my hand, keep in mind I resemble a younger Jack Nicholson (a lot). So here she is presented with a screaming man with an ice pick in his hand that looks as crazy as Jack in the Shining. She quickly left the house and returned with a police escort and always had an escort from the point forward. My wife said it was the most frightening things she had ever seen. The ice pick was a coincident and I was not holding it to intimidate her but looking back I can see how crazy that scene must have looked.
I wonder whether they'd start chasing false reports if somebody made a list of every DCF employee, their close friends and family, and called DCF on every single one of them.
I read this story, and it's very sad. But I just feel the need to ask... why is this on Hacker News? Surely this is Reddit type content?
I read loads of really interesting and eye-opening posts about all sorts of non-tech subjects... but I don't feel they should be on Hacker News to the detriment of other tech stories that could be on the front page.
Lots of hackers are parents. Where else can a discussion of parenting issues from a hacker perspective happen? Or law, for that matter? Just because the OP isn't specifically about tech doesn't mean that there is no value in a hacker-specific conversation.
I suspect that an increasing number of hackers rely upon HN for the majority of their news, myself included. Since "hacking the system" is a popular subject on HN, personal interest stories that show how "the system" works, or doesn't work, are of interest to enough readers to bring those stories to the front page.
Because it's very interesting and very high quality. Also, from the guidelines of this site:
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
Outside the US nudity is not so taboo. In my daughter's kindergarten (a nice private school in Southeast Asia) boys and girls share the same bathroom, with no private stalls, and no door on the entrance. Everyone sees everything -- passers-by included. Meanwhile, in the US, nudity is synonymous with sex, and good people have to worry about things like this.
I'll add to that by saying it's a sign of our times as well. I was educated with material from the 60's / 70's & having nudity in school textbooks was perfectly normal then, including shared nudity between adults & children.
I almost have a feeling that in the US we are building up to a Hilter-esque take-over of the government. It's just taking a lot longer than it took the Nazis because the times aren't as extreme, and our system of government was better designed to resist such things...
Let's just hope our economy holds out. It reminds me of a photo of a German shoveling money into a woodstove because it was so devalued...and the folks were ready to listen to someone promising a way to be a world power again.
It's troubling that you make this observation. A friend of mine did his Ph.D. in East European studies before the Berlin Wall fell. He told me 15 years ago, over a few Newcastles, that "the US is ripe for fascism". I find the thought terrifying still. Let's hope the US political process keeps such a Dark Age from occurring.
Interesting, I started reading Mein Kampf a while ago because I sometimes feel like we are living in similar times. Let's just hope that no one charismatic enough to make a difference stands up. Or if one does, let it be quick & painless. In my darker moments I often think "This would be a damn fine planet to live on given current technology and a few billion humans less."
After reading the article, my first thought was "why I can't imagine that happening outside the US?". When and why did nudity become such a taboo there? It seems to be much more acceptable to show children violence than nudity, which I found absurd. I mean, which is more harmful for 13 years old child to see on TV, a breast or shooting?
While I don't necessarily disagree, let me point out that it's considered okay to show a painting of a breast, or an acted shooting, but showing an actual breast or real shooting are both considered taboo. I think people lose track of the fact that violence on TV (and in video games, etc) is pretend violence, whereas most nudity is real nudity, rather than a simulation of same.
I'm not saying that makes it sensible, but it does bring the American treatment of them closer together than they seem at first glance.
Yes. :) However, showing a centerfold spread on TV doesn't. I remember seeing _Dead Poets' Society_ on TV when I was a teen, and wondering how they could get away with showing the centerfold's breasts on broadcast TV. Somehow it doesn't count if it's a painting or photo of nudity.
This would be so very easy to push down the obvious slippery slope. Imagine a movie with a progression... painting of a nude male and female, then a picture of the subjects of that painting, then a sequence of paintings of them going from something like a slide-show with a transition every 10 seconds to a couple paintings per second so they do a little stop-motion dance. Then repeat the slide-show with pictures of the subjects. Next introduce another layer, a shot of a TV showing the painting, then the pictures... how can you tell the difference between the TV showing picture of the nudes and a paused video of the nudes? What if two people repeatedly hold up a black sheet in front of the two nudes while they are moving and then drop the sheet for a second as the nudes hold still... how is that different from the slide-show of the pictures of those nudes. All this could be done integrated with the plot and dialogue, maybe something about what is real and how you tell the difference between a real and fake photo/video of something.
So in the progressions, when would the censors put the black boxes over the "naughty" bits? Would there be a difference in that for the man and the woman?
> "When and why did nudity become such a taboo there? "
Much of the country was built and populated by puritans. State's rights and a lack of urbanization allowed tight-knit communities of like-minded people to keep anyone different away. This created a sort of moral echo chamber, that carried their views into modernity without ever being tempered via intellectual or moral challenge. And the US system of representation gives those rural communities quite a bit of power over national mores.
As for the rhetorical: it depends on context. It always depends on context. Nudity isn't necessarily less harmful.
Hiding violence and death away from children can be just as harmful as hiding nudity.
Nudity, violence, and death cannot be hidden, they are inherit. Trying to hide them won't work. The more you hide it the more significant and fascinating the less frequent exposures appear. This isn't to say that extensive exposure can't lead to distorted conditioning or attitudes; it can. But you can't damage a child through non-exposure; it's just not possible in the first place.
> "But you can't damage a child through non-exposure; it's just not possible in the first place."
Whether honest non-exposure might be fine is beyond even an academic concern. It's overwhelmingly improbable that a child could be raised without being exposed to those things; short of willful sheltering.
Unless you work as a cop or live in a war zone, (luckily) most people don't usually see (or experience) brutal violence in their life. We learn that stuff from tv. But most of us exposure daily to naked human body (in fact, we live in one) and its intimate parts since day zero. So, while I agree that no child should hidden from reality (or vice versa), I would think twice what's the actual reality and the fictional-reality-brought-to-you-by-enterntaintment-industry.
>most people don't usually see (or experience) brutal violence in their life
I'm going to stretch my neck out (as it were) and say that most people in the world butcher their own meat and at least kill some of the meat they consume. Granted outside the wealthy regions this is rarely going to be large animals but still.
Many many peoples are exposed daily to the threat of major violence to themselves too.
I'll tentatively accept that the majority of humans don't directly witness brutal violence against other humans in their lives.
I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like a terrible troll, but when an entire religious group gets up and sails across an ocean because everyone back home won't stop telling them that they're crazy... what else would you expect?
This is just a sort of ahistorical folk wisdom explanation. An entire religious group sailed across the ocean because everyone back home told them they were crazy and founded Pennsylvania -- is the US noted for its fanatic devotion to pacifism?
That makes quite a lot of sense, but unfortunately doesn't fit with the general impression I have that things didn't used to be nearly this bad.
On the other hand, I hear that a really long time ago women always had really long dresses and the only skin you ever saw was their face and hands. So maybe the rules really are being relaxed, and kids just don't get an exemption any more.
"When and why did nudity become such a taboo there?"
It gradually became less and less common, but it didn't actually become taboo until relatively recently. Maybe 1996-1999 if I had to put a timeframe on it. This is back when we were approaching the millenium so there was momentum behind 'modern' reforms, and at the same time public opinion was mostly determined by glossy magazines like Newsweek. So around a lot of 'glossy' policy was enacted based on this formulaic and simplistic journalism style, which was good for covering the school shooting of the week but not so good for anything else.
Not saying this applies to you but a lot of possibly questionable material that is bypassing the eyes of processing at a drug store is now being made available to many more than a couple of people online.
Sounds like the system worked. She was accused of a crime, an investigation was performed, the state realized they had no case and that nothing was wrong, and the charges were dropped.
I guess it's kind of a pain to be the target of an investigation, but nobody's life was ruined.
> I guess it's kind of a pain to be the target of an investigation, but nobody's life was ruined.
I'm sure you've met someone who did something stupid, and every time you come across them it springs to mind. How would you like it if that was you, and the something stupid was being accused of was child pornography? Everyone who heard about it didn't necessarily hear the resolution or the circumstances.
... This is the longer and cleaner version of the "you can build a thousand bridges" anecdote.
Ruined maybe not, but based on the article and other comments in this thread there is clearly a lasting effect felt after having to go through such horrendous circumstances.
The uncertainty, anger, frustration, guilt, depression etc are all things which do not just stop when the case is dropped.
All these people needed was for the person making the original accusation to think for themselves and make a rational judgment rather than simply "do their jobs".
a) If the system worked, the initial photos would have been checked and then the complaint would have been disregarded.
b) If the system worked, innocent parents who provided a loving and safe home for their children would not have been treated like criminals.
c) If the system worked, the state would not have kept pushing in the hope of getting some sort of conviction in a case where it was manifestly clear that nothing had happened.
d) If the system worked, the children in the case would not have been subjected to invasive and personal questioning by government functionaries.
Accusations of pedophilia do ruin lives, and no one should ever have to go through the hell of proving their innocence in a case as flimsy as this.
>b) If the system worked, innocent parents who provided a loving and safe home for their children would not have been treated like criminals.
Your statements (a) and (c) seem sound to me. (b) and possibly (d) is a necessary part of the system. If guilt can not be ascertained without investigation then practically some innocent people will be treated like criminals by being investigated. (d) may be a necessary part of such investigation depending on the allegations.
That said in the OP's case I don't think (d) should have happened and I'm concerned that the investigators could have effectively opened the door to improper sexual activity by asking the children questions like "did an adult touch you between your legs" or something that would lead the child to see this as a forbidden fruit that they had previously not regarded but now desired to explore.
It would be 'kind of a pain' if the system worked so reasonably well that any remotely decent parent could trust to be acquitted within a week. As the system is, it's not just 'kind of a pain'. It's an emotionally wrecking experience, because you live in uncertainty for a long time, where the possible consequences are severe and you can't be sure of a positive outcome, no matter how decent you are. Kafka understood this.
I don't think the fact that false leads are investigated is really the problem. But that investigation should be resolved much more quickly and much more transparently.
Really the harm seems to be in they way people are being treated not in trying to prevent child abuse etc...
On the one hand I completely sympathize with the author. As a parent myself I would not wish this upon anyone.
On the other hand, the author is a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt. If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If they were treated any other way, there would have been a public outrage.
Think about the officers handling this case. There is absolutely zero incentive for them to handle this case differently. If the accused turn out to be guilty, then they better have handled this case with the utmost seriousness. Any leniency can possibly lead to a scandal. And media love childmolesting scandals, so the officers will be part of a nation if not worldwide scandal. They will be singled out, their mistake will be broadcasted for the whole world to see, and they effictively lose their job.
If people turn out to be innocent, psyches have been damaged, it's bad but they'll get over it. More importantly, maybe a complaint will be filed, they will have done the right thing within the rules, and case is closed.
> If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened.
If that's true, then we have a huge problem.
Basically I'm hearing this in that comment: If someone is innocent, they are innocent until proved guilty. If someone is guilty, they are guilty until proved innocent.
Why wasn't the Clerk investigated for child pornography/molestation?
If you look at a picture of naked kids in non-sexual situations and think you're seeing something sexual then there is something wrong with you. Full stop. Either you've been abused, you're an abuser yourself or you've been horribly brain washed. Any of these possibilities makes you more of a risk than the person who shot the photos.
Taking this a step further, people need to start filing scary "child pornography" charges at judges, lawyers and everyone else who participates in this kind of insanity. If the judge doesn't take one look at the photo, realize it's nothing and dismiss the case then he might well be a consumer of child pornography. Otherwise, why didn't he realize it was innocent? If a few people in power start getting their lives ruined by this nonsense maybe it would stop.
That's absurd; there is a distinct difference between seeing something that concerns you and becoming sexually aroused by said image. To suggest they are "consumers of child pornography" is just a bit rude...
For the untrained eye such photo's as in this case may have shocked him/her and prompted the knee-jerk reaction of calling the police. You are right in part; I think the main problem is that, absurdly, any images of naked children are starting to worry people. Part of that is founded in fact; you will find people with thousands of images of different children running around naked on beaches/parks/camping trips. But, clearly, in this case it is just a family camping trip and the clerk has either refused or is unable to process that.
I recall that a few years ago I was taking pics at a family wedding and happened, while taking shots of my cousins running round playing, to take a shot which included my youngest cousin doing a handstand with her skirt over her head. It was a completely innocent picture; and if I was ever investigated for CP it would never be flagged as CP - but my Aunt was absolutely insistent I should delete the photo.
>That's absurd; there is a distinct difference between seeing something that concerns you and becoming sexually aroused by said image. To suggest they are "consumers of child pornography" is just a bit rude...
What is absurd is a situations where natural actions (taking photos of your children) become, randomly, life ruining [1]. You say my suggestion is rude but this is in fact exactly what happened to the author of the story. If one of these two people (the author or the clerk) had to have their life ruined because of the chance that they might be dangerous I would pick the clerk as he/she is actually exhibiting bizarre behavior.
Further, having an extreme reaction to natural things indicates some kind of problem. I can't know if the clerk was sexually aroused by the photos, felt guilty and reacted extremely to fight against those feelings that he/she knew were wrong. I can only see the extreme action they took. I can't know what triggered it, but it's definitely a problem and more worthy of looking into than the random innocent by-stander who triggered this persons episode.
[1] If this were isolated it might not be such a huge issue, but it's happening quite a lot (relatively). Remember the recent case where photos of a 17 year old girl in a bikini were investigated as child pornography? What about the guy who was naked in his house making breakfast and was accused of being an exhibitionist? Couple this with the insane "child abuser register" the US has and things look pretty alarming.
If this were isolated it might not be such a huge issue, but it's happening quite a lot (relatively).
No it isn't. You hear about some of these cases because, rightly, it occasionally hits the media but in general it is not happening a lot (comparatively anyway).
People are getting too cagey over child nudity and prudish in general; but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender.
I would pick the clerk as he/she is actually exhibiting bizarre behavior.
Not to my mind. They are reacting irrationally to images that disturb him/her; it does not make them a sex offender.
I see what you are saying; but I don't think it comes as a result of people being abused or secretly being pedophiles; it is more a reflection of a society where we are slowly becoming terrified of the "bogeyman" pedophile at every turn.
To put your point another way; if you saw, through a living room window, someone strangling another person whilst having sex with them would you call the police? And would it be because you found it sexually arousing? or is because you were worried about the person? See the difference.
>No it isn't. You hear about some of these cases because, rightly, it occasionally hits the media but in general it is not happening a lot (comparatively anyway).
I put on the relatively tag for a reason. I heard of about 7 cases in one year, each one of them completely insane. That's a lot relative to where I'm living in Europe where I've heard of zero such cases. It's also a lot relative to how many should have happened, also zero.
>but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender.
No, most people behave this way because they've been horribly and dangerously brain washed into behaving this way. So how do you "fix" them?
Imagine some less extreme behaviors that people could do and how it would be greeted. Imagine some intimate situation like a young man proposing to a young lady in a restaurant. Suddenly some jerk walks up and loudly farts in his face. How would this be reacted to? I can think of a lot of potential reactions, all of which would be extreme enough to let the drive by farter know that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.
Now lets step it up a notch. Someone urinates on the floor in the middle of a semi-crowded area. Now we're talking jail time, right? Maybe the person grew up in a culture where this was acceptable or even expected. Doesn't matter, they did something more extreme than the last example and will be greeted with a more extreme result.
Now back to our clerk. This person looked at some normal family photos and reacted by ruining someone's life. I think this person finding themselves the subject of such an investigation would be appropriate and effective at teaching people that this kind of bizarre behavior is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.
>Not to my mind. They are reacting irrationally to images that disturb him/her; it does not make them a sex offender.
Neither did the person taking the photos. Remember, my statement was if I had to pick between the two of them. Would you seriously pick the author in that situation? Then I have some bad news for you...
>if you saw, through a living room window, someone strangling another person whilst having sex with them would you call the police?
Bad example. Enough people are into such behavior that I absolutely would not call the police. Further, if I did I would fully expect to find myself on the business end of a peeping Tom case.
But if we changed your example to me just seeing someone being strangled then I would call the police. Because I saw something extreme happening. I would not call the police if I saw two people hugging. See the difference?
That's a lot relative to where I'm living in Europe where I've heard of zero such cases.
There are similar cases over here (in Europe), you just don't hear about them (for reasons I've never got to the bottom of). 7 cases may seem a lot, and you are right it should be 0. But relative to the number of successful child abusers caught it's a pretty good statistic.
No, most people behave this way because they've been horribly and dangerously brain washed into behaving this way. So how do you "fix" them?
Agreed; this didn't seem to be what you were saying before. But now I see you were less suggesting they were sex offenders but that they should face the consequences too & this would limit their desire for prosecutions.
I disagree with this being the right approach. Where this process failed was the first officer who thought the images were fine but still escalated it; that officer should be someone experienced, qualified and serious enough to have said "no, this is not a concern" - perhaps after quickly talking to the parents.
Now back to our clerk. This person looked at some normal family photos and reacted by ruining someone's life. I think this person finding themselves the subject of such an investigation would be appropriate and effective at teaching people that this kind of bizarre behavior is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.
This is a completely different point to one you were originally making - at least how it reads anyway. And I agree; there should be consequences if you deliberately ruin someones life. But if the clerk is acting in good faith (in a way that doesn't sync with the examples you highlighted) so I'd argue a serious word/caution is sufficient to show him/her that they made a mistake and to take more care in the future.
Would you seriously pick the author in that situation? Then I have some bad news for you...
I'd pick neither. end of.
But if we changed your example to me just seeing someone being strangled then I would call the police. Because I saw something extreme happening. I would not call the police if I saw two people hugging. See the difference?
Yes. Sadly it is not a comparable example - because two people hugging is not associated with anything sexual or inappropriate. I was trying to highlight the idea that you might see something that others found sexually enticing but that simply concerned you - in such a case you are not a sexually excited by the event, just concerned. This is the mentality of the clerk; and you are right it is a result of a messed up society.
What should have happened (assuming the clerk is still concerned enough in this perfect situation to have called the police) is the police man should have called the parents, chatted informally to assure himself that it was as he suspected and then left it at that.
The failure here appears to be societies attitude to child nudity followed quickly by maddening bureaucracy.
>Agreed; this didn't seem to be what you were saying before. But now I see you were less suggesting they were sex offenders but that they should face the consequences too & this would limit their desire for prosecutions.
Yes, sorry I wasn't clear enough. If it came out a bit ambiguous that's because it is for me. I suspect that in most cases none of the people involved are abusers but I maintain that there is something wrong with some of them (especially the officials seeking convictions where a normal person would realize the material in question is innocent).
>But if the clerk is acting in good faith
This a case where I'm ambiguous on. On the one hand the Clerk was probably just trying to stay out of trouble so it was it was the fault of the Cop for not dropping it or other officials who continued to peruse it further.
On the other hand "just doing my job" is no excuse. Further I would punish blind "job doers" much more aggressively than anyone else. They are the enablers of atrocities. No one would have ever heard of everyone's favorite Godwin subject were it not for (literally) armies of "just doing my job"s. Imagine what would have happened in Iraq if the US enlisted soldiers had simply refused to go there. Most any (if not all) atrocity one could name were enabled by people who more often than not didn't like what they were doing but ultimately did as they were told.
>I'd pick neither. end of.
Then your statement doesn't apply to what I said. I said that if I had to (e.g. gun is pointed at me, etc.) pick one of those two I would pick the Clerk.
>because two people hugging is not associated with anything sexual or inappropriate.
Nor were the photos in question.
>I was trying to highlight the idea that you might see something that others found sexually enticing but that simply concerned you - in such a case you are not a sexually excited by the event, just concerned.
I get what you were trying to do but I still maintain that if a person sees something normal and is disturbed by it then they have a disconnect. Something has to highlight this clearly for them so they realize they have the issue and can fix it. We should not cater to such eccentricity as this causes it to get even more extreme.
>What should have happened (assuming the clerk is still concerned enough in this perfect situation to have called the police) is the police man should have called the parents, chatted informally to assure himself that it was as he suspected and then left it at that.
I've read just over 30 pages of the comments on Salon to this story, and undoubtedly I'll read many more. My main observation is that most of the commenters seem to be sensible people who do understand what parenting is like, and how kids really act. Thank _God_. But some of the other comments just make me facepalm terrifically.
Legally, I'm going to be an adult within the month. I'm certainly not a parent, but I am a kid, and I haven't been so brainwashed as to lose sight of what pre-adolescence is like. I could go on and on about the funny, stupid, and downright embarrassing things I did, particularly before I turned "double-digits".
Side-point: Giving these decidedly private photos to a public agency to develop was an absolutely stupid thing to do, but by no stretch of the imagination can I blame everything on him because of it. That's a lesson learned, for sure, but the idea that anything else he did was "wrong" just blows my mind. I'd like to say to some of the salon commenters... don't impose your personal morals on everyone else, please. I know there's a fantastic one-word term for people who do that, but it escapes me.
Giving these decidedly private photos to a public agency to develop was an absolutely stupid thing to do
But that's the way we used to live. Before digital, very few of us could develop our own film. Just like most of us buy our beer at a store rather than making it- and therefore some agency could get a handle on how much we consume. In the future this may look like a stupid thing to do, but now it's all we really have and nobody thinks about it twice. My parents had no alternative to developing the pictures of me at a store.
I tend to hold the Thoreauvian point that one ought to resist unfair laws. As I noticed, Child Protective Services are state agencies. If someone was falsely accused of child abuse/child porn, with no hope of winning the case whatsoever, how effective would it be to run away with the family?
IANAL, but in general, I think meritless cases like this one eventually get dismissed, though it's a lot of hassle and waste in the meantime. Even if your case doesn't get dismissed and your children are about to get taken away, running away with the children could only vastly, vastly aggravate the matter, as far as I am aware. In many cases you'll be able to get the children back. If you flee, that is much less likely. You'd be a fugitive and you'd be in serious, serious trouble, I think, even if the state's case was baseless to start out.
I think the best option is to do as the person in the article did and deal with it in a cooperative and respectful manner, as much as we may resent it.
While I agree with you, it's worth noting that your children are removed from you custody almost immediately, regardless of the outcome of the investigation. So, the "hassle and waste" you refer to can devastate a family.
I think it depends on what phase you're in with regards to leaving. If at the very beginning of the investigation, after the first visit from DFS, they had left for France I imagine this case would have simply been forgotten. They hadn't been charged with any crime, so they're not legal fugitives in any sense. They may never want to return to that particular state on the off chance someone from DFS who remembers the case notices them, but I imagine even that to be a very slim possibility. Even later in the case though, I'm troubled to think of a law they're breaking by simply moving to another state.
If I'm ever in a situation similar to this, I will heavily weigh moving, or at least sending my wife and kids out of state, before entrusting my family to a random bureaucrat.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 278 ms ] threadOn the other hand, the US has one of the most sexualized tweens and teen-agers I have ever seen, go to the Mall or the local movie house on a Friday and you would be shocked at how girls dress (and how their parents let them dress like this). And if that doesn't shock you, watch the movie Thirteen.
no sane politician would ever propose a relaxation in these laws
So what did the other countries, that have less-strict laws, do?
(I agree that Americans are very afraid of anything sexual, but I'm not sure how this happened. Not everyone is a Puritan.)
As to your question, laws and solutions vary widely by country. And other countries have their own problems. (See, for instance, the Catholic abuse scandal in Ireland.) But in general other countries have laws which serve the same purpose as US laws, however with less draconian details. For instance England and Canada have copied US legislation for registered sex offenders. However they do not seem to have implemented the sort of geographic rules on where they can live that lead to the infamous tent city under a bridge in Miami.
It’s not a very nice answer but I think they have less direct democracies and delegate many of the nitty-gritty details of the law to experts. That’s also why there is no death penalty in Europe.
Really?
My theory was always this: Frontier cultures need death penalties because they don't have the resources to keep very many people imprisoned for very long. The same is true of nomadic cultures, which explains a lot of things in the Bible. (The Old Testament has a long list of crimes, all of which are punishable with stoning. Which is sensible for a nomadic culture wandering around a region that has a lot of rocks lying around.)
Vast parts of the US were a frontier culture until maybe 100 years ago (less in Alaska, more in Massachusetts). Europe has been settled for centuries. Which one do you predict would give up the death penalty first?
There is a interesting (but expensive) book about this topic [1], from the blurb: Movements to abolish the death penalty cannot be understood without a grasp of the dynamics of public opinion on capital punishment, which is driven not by rational consideration but by what cognitive psychologists call 'social intuitions,' deeply rooted attitudes which are resistant to change. European death-penalty abolitionists quickly realized the futility of trying to change public opinion on a mass scale, and instead devised strategies to accomplish abolition despite lingering public support for the death penalty. Pointing to the importance of political structures that allowed European abolitionists to bypass public opinion, this study assesses the prospects of the 'European model' of abolition in global perspective.
[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0230231985?tag=gerjoy-21&camp...;
There's a constant stream of fear mongering about paedophiles and terrorists in all mass media.
The Bible is pretty clear that the parent should raise the child. The Bible is really against "Caesar" taking a big part of your life for example 'spare the rod, spoil the child'.
Your wording here suggests that the argument for the sentiment is a weak one. I don't think that is born out. All verses in Proverbs with "rod" in them in NIV.
# Proverbs 10:13 Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks judgment.
# Proverbs 13:24 He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.
# Proverbs 14:3 A fool's talk brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them.
# Proverbs 22:8 He who sows wickedness reaps trouble, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.
# Proverbs 22:15 Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.
# Proverbs 23:13 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.
# Proverbs 23:14 Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.
# Proverbs 26:3 A whip for the horse, a halter for the donkey, and a rod for the backs of fools!
# Proverbs 29:15 The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.
Some things have improved in recent years. The incidence of bad therapy leading to false memory syndrome has been reduced, and with it the rate of false accusations. (There are also now improved odds for abused kids to be able to get information on what abuse is actually like, rather than getting detailed, unrealistic fantasies.) Others are worse. For instance in Miami the rule that sex offenders have to live at least 2500 feet from any school means that about the only place they could live was under a particular bridge. (As of April this year they have been transferred elsewhere, but which elsewhere that is I'm not sure. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle_Causeway_sex_offen... for more.)
I would be the last to trivialize abuse or its very real problems. But there is a world of difference between 50 year olds going after prepubescent kids and 19 year olds who dated 16 year olds. And there is little to be gained from treating them all like lepers. Certainly less than could be gained if we, for instance, took some of the energy that goes into following up on almost certainly bogus reports and instead put it into improving the foster care system.
Really? Sounds more like there's some cynical jerk with no sense of ethics or boundaries who gets their jollies by randomly victimizing normal families with the excessive powers bestowed upon them by paranoid CYA legislation and an army of deranged ideologues who see abuse everywhere.
It sounds a lot like mad bureaucracy, incompetence and disinterest. Which, if anything, is even worse.
The state taking my kids is actually my worst parental nightmare--even beyond all the accidental and criminal bad things that could happen. I'm a very good parent (you'll have to take my word, I guess), but I'm not conventional. And I know all it takes sometimes is a little misunderstanding.
If the child is front facing, your rear-view mirror will be filled with your child's face. But imagine the child falls asleep in a rear facing car seat after you have been up all night with them. It happens every summer to good parents.
I go the other extreme, every time I'm in the car by myself I have a few "Oh no! Where's the baby!" moments.
That said, they did make 2 very big mistakes, and if they hadn't done either or both of them, none of the rest would have happened. first, they took pictures of the kids naked. two, they let those pictures get into the hands of strangers, ones who can then misinterpret and/or be legally obliged to do certain actions which could start a witch hunt. These people knew they were innocent, that's fine, but the problem is that from a stranger's POV, what they see is that two adult men went into the forest with some some kids, some of the kids got naked, they took photos of it. Connect the dots. It paints a bad picture. They were incredibly naive to have not realized this ahead of time.
But yes, we have a horrible system, and we need to find some way to make it better so we can protect children while at the same time not persecuting innocent adults. I'm not quite sure how we can do that.
Almost every other child I grew up with had "nekkid pictures" of them, taken by their parents: bathing, having done something foolish or amusing, or just generally running around the house like kids do.
Your post paints you as a reasonable person, and that actually terrifies me: a reasonable person shouldn't see an error in judgement here. These were parents doing what parents do, taking pictures of their kids doing what kids do. Proud parents, possibly thinking, "we'll embarrass the hell out of them when they're 16". (I may be projecting a bit of my father here.)
We're shaping a society that's cynical and distrustful, and it starts with reasonable people associating behavior like this with phrases like "they should have known better".
To put it another way, it's like running across a highway at rush hour. Why do it? Upside is a brief thrill (if you survive). Downside is you die horribly. Conclusion: don't do it.
Avoiding completely normal behaviour because of a fear of constant surveillance and being turned in by those around you? This does not strike you as completely f*cked up?
Some people don't think it's normal to want to photograph children naked. Others do. Some may not think it's abnormal, but on the other hand think it is not wise. Clearly, you think it's okay to do. Or you just think it is not unwise, or should not be banned. Those are each distinct nuanced states of mind on the matter. That's fine.
I don't see where all this "being terrified" angle is coming from actually. I guess I have a different understanding of the word terror and terrifying.
Having an awareness of the state of one's society is a useful thing. To be aware of possibilities, and make choices accordingly I'd argue is a smart thing. It's not being fucked up, it's being wise and pragmatic. As was shown in the OA, in theory everybody is innocent until proven guilty. But in practice, especially regarding this particular issue, it's effectively the opposite. Clearly we want to change that. But the world is not like that at the moment. Should we try to make it better? Yes. Can we make it better? Possibly not. Should we do the wisest thing in the meantime? You'll probably have a happier life if you do, but it is up to you whether the tradeoff is worth it. From my perspective, there's almost no upside and therefore no tradeoff to consider. YMMV. But do not be "terrified" of my position. Be terrified of a giant flying shark in the night or something. But not something like this. :P
"As was shown in the OA, in theory everybody is innocent until proven guilty. But in practice, especially regarding this particular issue, it's effectively the opposite."
This state of affairs is merely scary.
It is your blasé acceptance of this state of affairs that is terrifying.
Because it's For The Children™. And, For The Children™, our legal system is turned upside down, causing huge amounts of damage, including damage to The Children.
Some things should not have to be worked around. Some things are wrong, and should be decried. A situation where parents are scared to photograph and document the growth of their families is exactly wrong, and should exactly be decried.
Or, you could simply not do those things and get on your flight and on with your life.
PS: I would hate to be the (edit: completely innocent) person that tries to stand up to CPS, but create a blog, document everything. Hell, insist on a warrant, it's a constitutionally protected right etc.
I agree that this is sad. I agree that parents should be able to take pictures of kids running around and playing, even if the children are naked.
But the thing is, especially if you're taking these images to a third party for development, you don't want to give anyone any reason whatsoever to spring this kind of thing on you. Maybe someone at the drug store is best friends with your ex-wife's mom and they think that they can use this to finally put you out of the picture. Maybe someone at the drug store is just utterly unreasonable, as seems to have been the case here, and sees completely innocent photos in a bad light. If you take these on your digital camera and your disk gets confiscated in the course of a search warrant and the police find images of nude children, even if they are completely innocent images, do you think that they won't use that to help their case? Cops assume that they wouldn't be investigating someone if that someone were actually innocent and have a history of vindictiveness, dishonesty, and general nastiness that they justify by that belief.
So please understand that no one is advocating the position that you shouldn't be allowed to record images of your own children doing funny things/acting cute/whatever while naked. We are just saying that it's the best way to stay out of trouble here.
Once you understand the goals of the various parties involved, it all makes sense ... and there is no hysteria involved whatsoever.
The problem is that the cynicism and distrustfulness is directed toward the wrong things. There should be more cynicism toward the busybodies and the wolf-criers. We need more innocent until proven guilty, which means not hassling people just to find something, anything to support a case against them.
Nudity isn't inherently sexual, culturally we have made it so.
According to the article there was not - it was one of the children carrying a broken beer bottle.
Yes, I confess, I did skim the middle/end a little bit.
As I read this I thought to myself "if you've bought a disposable camera that will need to be professionally developed why are you taking naked photos of your children?". Use a digital camera or skip the nakedness.
It's like me (a pasty faced white geek) taking my sports car out for a cruise around Bay Shore and Hunters Point here in San Francisco (big crime, gang and drug activity). Sure there is nothing illegal for going for a drive in any part of the city, but I'm going to get stopped by a police cruiser on the suspicion of looking to score drugs or prostitutes.
Even if I'm not doing anything illegal whatsoever, it's naive to think it isn't going to raise suspicion and investigation.
Pair of police cruisers pulled over completely unprompted and confronted us, ran our registration and driver's licences, and gave us a lecture on speeding & racing.
I don't blame them, and in fact I'm happy they were doing that, especially as they weren't assholes about it. They are trying to fight the death rate up there, and as they can't be everywhere at once, they were just doing all they could to proactively prevent. I think it'd be totally unreasonable to get upset over that. Sure, it'd have been a bit nicer of an evening if the cops didn't pay us a visit, but we were giving off some warning signs (being there late in coupes) so they checked us out, end of story.
In other words: no it bloody doesn't paint a bad picture. It paints a picture that is completely regular in 999 out of a 1000 cases. If you think it paints a bad picture, then you've already been convinced by them to such an extent that you feel their reasoning is justified. It isn't. The clerk was wrong to suspect anything from the photos. Completely, utterly, wrong.
Right, and you think my parents, and all those others, developed their own photos when I was running around butt naked on some beach 28 years ago? It's a cultural change for the worse; nothing inherent in the photos.What is this world coming to when this is considered "a mistake"?
to fix i propose allowing only a small number of trusted admins to be able to bring a comment below 1.
No he did not, this is not court, you have no right to due process. Your rights are considered secondary to the rights of the children given that you are in question you can not by nature be the child advocate. The DCF (whoever your states agency is) takes that role. So they get to decide if a lawyer is present or not for child questioning, etc.
All you really can get from a lawyer in this situation is advice and legal counsel if they decide to bring charges as well as a agent to act on your (not your children) behalf.
It is a nightmare where they have you and your lawyer over a barrel until you can catch them up and get them to relent.
Everything you say (and/or write) may be used against you.
Have a nice day :)
But don't worry, because the web is the future of computing and one day all our information will be stored in giant central databases outside of our control. Isn't the cloud great?
(And by the way, "common sense" is not always the same thing as "good sense".)
On the one hand, nobody wants children to suffer. If at all possible, every child should be protected from abuse. I think the key, as the author elaborates on, is education. Knowing the difference between a crazy hippy family and pedophiles seems like common sense -- but if you, as an uneducated clerk at a crappy CVS in the middle of nowhere, saw something that offended your sensibilities and seemed perverse... Without education things like this will happen again and again. Once something like this gets into the bureaucratic pipeline it becomes an unfortunate problem of due diligence.
The idea is that if A does bad thing B, all you have to do is pass a law against doing B, and A will stop doing B.
But that's not how it works in practice. Instead, you introduce this third character C, who goes out looking for As who might be doing Bs, and potentially does a lot of damage in that search.
That damage isn't taken into consideration by the people who simply want As to stop doing B. But people, as a collective electorate, are like a simple-minded 6-year-old, who are promised something by their parents, and they clap their hands in glee, unable to imagine the downsides.
That is unusual (at least in my experience) and, yes, we need to avoid these cases.
But how do you treat the 8 year old who makes accusations about her father; how much do you have to believe before investigating him? How certain do you have to be that she may be lying before dropping the case? This is the main area of unjust investigations remaining (at least in the UK) and it is troublesome how to find the safe medium.
It really comes down to a simple question: who owns your children, you or the state? As of late, it's the latter.
Miraculously we got our kids back in very short order, however the bureaucrats wouldn't give us the slightest scrap of documentation that the event had ever taken place (and this remains true til now). And needless to say, we received no apology either (at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp guards).
I have nothing good to say about the arbitrary, condescending, totalitarian bureaucrats/"advocates", or the (CA) legislators who wrote such one sided laws ("for the children", no doubt) giving these petty tyrants their obscene powers. I guess many reading this will think "necessary collateral damage by wonderful, diligent state employees pursuing the greater good"; all well and good until _you_ are the ones in their crosshairs: then we'll hear what kind of tune _you_ sing about the glories of the state when you are deprived of due process among other things.
These horror stories are not solely an American problem: there are plenty of similar European stories. However, the American stories are by far more extreme, as both the punishment and the immediate social consequences are worse. Not only the bureaucrats are like concentration camp guards: the teachers that immediately distrust you and the neighbors that won't let their kid play with yours anymore are equally guilty of 'guilty until proven innocent'.
False reports out of revenge (for instance, between divorcees, jealous neighbours or oither idiots) are also very common, and the damage done to families because of that is significant.
The cure seems to be much worse than the disease here.
Friends of ours had a 'visit' of the dutch equivalent of the 'service' (I use the term lightly) who kept on suggesting that there must be something wrong. When the guy got up to make coffee the woman said 'you can tell me now', as though she was a victim too. Unbelievable, the way these people push their way in to peoples lives, guilty by default and if you are very very lucky you might get to keep your kids at their say-so.
You're probably thinking "aha! He's Home Schooling, therefore he's a Fundamentalist Christian therefore he's a loony tune, and I can scoff at him"; wrong; I am areligious. My bible, if any: http://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0380...
EDIT: formatting
IT's all too easy for people to forget they are individuals and capable of individual choices (which yes, have consequences.)
Anyways, we finally had had enough and we asked them to leave. I notified his brother of this an his brother had had enough as well, fearing for his two nieces the brother called DCF on them and started an investigation in an attempt to get the girls and provide them some stability (they where in and out of school, watched their father do drugs, and eventually watched him OD - more on that latter).
So, after that the crazy wife calls DCF on every family, that had kids, that they stayed with. So we end up getting cops and a DCF agent knocking on our door, conveniently at 11PM, a time when any dirt bag would be doing their nightly supply of drugs and we get this condescending attitude while we are being read a list of charges being levied against us. My father is there, because he is helping me install a wood floor in my living room and the DCF agent gives me a condescending lecture about unsafe environment for children (I answer well that is why we are doing it while they are in bed). She looked at me and asked what is going on here like it was some illicit activity.
They make us wake the kids up, and then they make them disrobe to see if they have any marks and take them on the back porch to ask them questions. Right before that, I asked if I needed a lawyer and the cop told me they are not needed in these situations.
Anyway, they told us we had to be at the court house for a urine test at 8AM the next morning. To which we complied after calling a lawyer once they left the night before.
In the mean time, I call the brother and tell him and his mother what happened. He, his sister and their mother calls the agent handling the case of his brother and tells her that their has been a false report that was used to victimize another person as a form of retaliation. He pretty much has to threaten the lady to contact the DCF agency in my town, which she finally does.
So, pretty open and shut right, nope. I ask our agent if she has been in contact with the (now network) of agents investigation false reports on everyone that has ever let these people stay with them and she tells me that she cannot confirm or deny it due to the fact that she has to protect the anonymity of the reporter but that our case was in active investigation, because they found items of concern in our house (If they provided half the case work diligence that they do to protect the anonymity of a random caller, we would have never been in this mess).
The items of concern was a pot pipe in the room that the family stayed in. I did not allow drugs to be used in my house and the brother clearly described the pot pipe to them as he had seen his brother pipe before, so there was no doubt that this pipe belonged to a known drug addict that lived in that room. Still no go, so now we are being investigated not for child abuse, as the original allegation claimed, but drug abuse, so they go through my medicine cabinet and catalog every pill bottle I have.
Then the drug test come back, and I come back positive for a controlled substance, Alazopram, I have had panic attacks since I was about 10 years old and have been under a doctors care for that long. They know this but feign like they don't.
They then decide to contact my doctor and volunteer the information that I am being investigated for drug abuse and then show up on my door to inform me that I will have to attend mandatory drug classes and enter a rehab facility or they will bring it before the judge. My l...
Second, was there nothing your lawyer could do, such as file an injunction against the DCF? Is there any way you can be compensated (in any way) for your experience? If there was would you take it?
It's rare that I would advocate to just let it be but in this case that would seem to me to be the safest option. Pick your battles.
So it doesn't mean that you shouldn't stand up, pick your battles literally means that you decide on the battleground and make sure they can't get back at you in some sneaky way that will upset your life in ways that you probably really wouldn't care about. See some of the other stories in this thread about how those things go.
Even worse, they can bring your children to psychologists and ask them leading questions that could lead to concerns about anything they like. DCFS can make your life a living hell if they like. And the more you piss them off the more they are likely to do just that.
I'm curious about this. In the original article, the writer mentions insisting that the interviews be recorded (and even then, they weren't).
Would you get in trouble via wiretap laws if you bugged your child during these interviews to hold a recording as evidence in the event leading questions are asked?
What bugs me most is that these institutions seems to be staffed mostly with people that have no children, go figure...
If I had taken action, it would have been less for money and more to force their hand at bringing the wife that made the allegations up on felony criminal charges. That is a personal vendetta of mine and would served no good for my family, so now I just let sleeping dogs lie. As I said, I give them a wide birth and try to avoid any contact with that organization.
But at the same time, we've had people close to us exhibit a constant pattern of abuse with their children, including using and dealing hard drugs with the children present and leaving things like syringes lying around. We called DCFS and the investigation, as far as I know, has gone nowhere.
The woman still has her children because every time the agents show she happens not to have anything particularly incriminating in plain sight. The woman is a serial liar and manipulator and uses people wherever she can. She has many medical problems incidental of her drug use and the way she has treated her body and uses them to her benefit, playing the persecution card. We believe that she is constantly on the edge of sanity and has issues with schizophrenia. She is regularly beaten by her partners, and the children see this. She is always cracked out on legal prescription drugs, which she has a valid prescription to use, because as above, she has abused her body for years and now has serious problems as a result.
Her son has a disability that requires special attention. If he gets injured, he must be administered a booster immediately or he may die. This child is frequently unsupervised while his mother sleeps until 2pm and he runs around outside with kids who don't speak English, jumping off of balconies and stuff. He frequently misses school for a week or so at a time (she makes sure he appears at least once every 10 days, because the school people don't file a report until 10 consecutive absences). But apparently DCFS can't do anything unless they happen to appear at a time when the mother has drugs in reach or sight of the children, and the story is that heretofore they haven't seen this.
I sympathize that it sucks to be falsely investigated, but if you consider that there are people like those described above, who have become expert manipulators and liars to conceal and feed their habits, and DCFS has to investigate them too, you can understand some skepticism on the part of the agents.
Either way, it's a pretty horrible system. I don't really know the answer, but the current setup obviously doesn't work; this woman still has custody of her children six months later (the last time we had contact with them, her boyfriend, who speaks almost no English, called to say that the woman had been away for two days and asked us to take the children so he could go to work) and innocent people get harassed for years because of pettiness and retaliatory reports. Someone should try to fix this, though obviously it's a pretty intractable problem.
An investigation is about due diligence and documentation. People can know things before a formal investigation is conducted. Suffice it to say that we had been quite close to this person and can affirm these things occurred with absolute surety.
I am so bitter and cynical about the whole ordeal that I have come to believe that you can do anything you want want so long as you let them check off their list of social programs they ran you through.
The father and high school friend that I spoke of had a stand off with the cops (DCF was trying to enter the home to investigate his brothers call), in which he was brandishing a weapon on the front porch claiming that he was going to kill himself and his family if the cops tried to enter his house (he was protecting his drugs). When DCF got a hold of him and he agreed to "enter" their program, the judge released him into the care of DCF and the DA dropped the charges so long as he entered a facility (1 month). The brother (who is still a good friend and not a drug addict) called me so mad when he found out that because his brother complied that he would (a) not be getting the kids out of the situation and (b) his brother was being administered a cocktail of legal drugs in the facility.
In my situation this was the point that my sanity started to weaken. I know that they deal with all kinds of manipulators and these two individual where class acts when in came to manipulation, but man they had so many red flags with these people, meanwhile with us, they found a single pipe and neither my wife or I, tested positive for a substance other than one I had a prescription for.
Anyway, I am glad it has long been history for us, but from my experience if you jump through their hoops you can get away with murder. If you don't, they are going to come after you with everything they have got.
I would be half serious in saying that there need to be a support group for DCF false investigation survivors. It was the worst hell we ever experienced and we did not feel secure in our house for years. The article talked about the journalist being in live fire situations and it not being as bad, I believe it whole hardily I would have rather been in a situation where I was being constantly shot at, than to endure that again.
(I found this out the 8th time I managed to drop my kids off 1 minute late).
My wife informs me that the 10 days thing was because the child was in kindergarten. My wife had gone down to the school and talked to the teachers about the matter so she knows more about that than I do. Apparently kindergarten isn't considered a "real thing" or something. If the guidelines are stricter for 1st grade, and I hope they are, then hopefully there will be more involvement once the school year starts back up. The case is still open and DCF still drops in occasionally afaik, but I hope additional reports/complaints would cause the process to intensify and/or work faster. The kids are in danger every minute they are with that woman, so I will be pleased to see them removed.
The biggest problem with reform is the unions and professions that make a lot of money on the current system. Until we can change the evaluation, metrics, and tenure; I really don't think there is any hope. My only bit of advice is to get a lawyer as soon as any possible dealing happen. Don't ever believe the "you don't need one" line. Your life and family is at stake and it is much easier to go after the people who were trying to help as opposed to the person getting "one more chance".
Saying that is the same as saying that they should have taken their children away just cause somebody claims you abused your children.
Do you want to retract that statement, or should I call DCF?
This evaluation method is of course as disastrous as lines of codes are for programmers. As a result, 1% of the French population has been arrested at least once last year. And this number is increasing.
Another example would be the number of American citizens that are on the Terrorist Watch List (I recall 4% [citation needed]). Official may get brownie points for putting one in, but never for putting one out. (Plus, there's might be an almost non-null chance that the guy might be, or know, a terrorist. Perhaps.)
Maybe if these guys were funded to a reasonable, lean level (as opposed to complete funding starvation), we'd get better behavior. If you compare their funding level compared to, say, drug enforcement, it's clear that we're a little misbalanced. "Catching the crooks" always sells better than "keeping kids out of juvie so they don't become crooks", no matter which one is more cost-effective.
Once you understand the incentive system it all starts to make sense.
These people ought to be summarily dismissed for gross incompetence. I'm happy it wasn't me under investigation if there is one thing that gets my dander up it is abuse of power like that.
Kudos to you for keeping your cool.
Maybe we should reconsider the laws, rather than the organization. If we didn't have a different standard of "guilty until proven innocent" that immediately kicks in when someone's accused of child abuse, the organization might be much more effective. Or less effective. I don't know. Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.
The plural of anecdote may not be data, but if there is no data to support something and plenty to support the opposite you're allowed to draw your own conclusions. Not everybody approaches each and every issue in life as though it were a scientific experiment, and when your relationship with your kid(s) is at stake you're allowed to make some shortcuts that a respectable scientist would never make.
Using sentences like 'the plural of anecdote is not data' is an easy way to make it seem as though a discussion on a subject is not proper because, after all, all we have is anecdotes but the trick with such sentences is to apply them to the right subjects. This is not one of those subjects.
Being accused of child abuse, in the world that we live in is a thing with tons of consequences, the organizations are empowered by the laws that we've got. Reconsideration of those laws is a fine goal but for the time being very unlikely, unless there will be a dramatic shift in the politics of many countries.
How many times has social services taken kids away from parents who were actually bad? 100s of times a day? How many lives and/or psyches have they saved this week?
The problem is indeed the politics, because if you're looking for a campaign issue, you can just propose some ridiculous draconian system like "we'll take away kids immediately upon accusation". If your opponent predictably objects that that's unreasonable, he's SOFT ON CHILD ABUSERS. Bonus points if you accuse him of coddling criminals and put up posters with a scary looking black guy on it.
These social service workers have a tough job and if they don't follow policy to the letter, they'll get canned. They've also, as said upthread, probably dealt with a fair number of convincing liars and gone home from work knowing that those liars' kids are still being abused. Obviously the cases cited are out of control and obviously we have problems regarding sex offender laws in this country -- you can be haunted for years by taking a leak in public. But the majority of social workers are getting crap pay for a thankless job that at the end of the day, leads to less child abuse. Let's just remember that.
I do know of one overlooked case but needless to say the child protection services are not interested in that one because daddy happens to be a fairly influential person in that particular community. But even in that case I'd wager the children are better of with their real parents than they would be in the hands of this 'service', which more often than not tosses children from the frying pan in to the fire.
Depending on where you're from it may be that the CPA or whatever it is called locally is doing a fantastic job, but so far I haven't seen any evidence of that and plenty of evidence of wrongdoing, powerplay, pettiness, revenge, allowing themselves to be used as a weapon between adults, messing up children's lives, messing up parents lives and in general doing a shitty job of it.
Politics doesn't even enter in to it, that's just the enabling element, the people that make up these institutions are a very large part of the problem, if they did their job right within the law as it is laid down at the moment the bigger part of the problem would go away.
As far as the people being the problem, well, I won't ever claim any organization is made up of entirely perfect people. But I'm not lining up to do that job, and you're clearly not, either. So in light of that, unless you're volunteering to do a better job, it might be worth considering that many of those in the job are doing what they can with what they have.
How did you manage to stay calm and respectful in the face of all the condescension and threat of losing your children? Since my son was born, I've observed my own protective tendencies really ratchet up. The few times I believed he was in real danger, all other concerns fell away, and removing the perceived danger was the only thing that mattered to me. I worry that were I to find my house invaded with people searching my stuff, accusing me of abuse, treating everything as evidence of guilt, the urge to crack some some heads might become overpowering. Of course, I rationally know that's the worst possible thing to do. But in the heat of the moment, the cerebrum doesn't always prevail. How did you keep your cool?
but seriously just like the author stated, my lawyer was the only thing that could pull me back into sanity. His slow calm voice logically deducing my actions and the outcomes would allow me to see the checkmate I was in and that any of those actions would be selfish (only make me feel better) and bring my family more harm than good. He would talk about my family being abandoned via my actions. Those words hurt more than knifes given the situation, thinking about your kids and wife left alone to deal with it (whether from you sitting in jail or worse) really cures you of those kind of thoughts.
EDIT: my wife reminded me that I did have one episode. We have an ice maker in our fridge that if you put it on crushed ice it will jam up due to poor design. Anyway the DCF agent is talking to me and I am trying to get ice, one of the kids put it on crushed so it is jammed, I go to the drawer to get an ice pick and start break up the ice. The DCF agent has got up from her seat and is walking towards me and is accusing me of all kind of crap, I am starting to raise my voice, keep in mind the fridge door is in between our views of each other. She continues on and at this point I am screaming at her and I slam the door and have an ice pick in my hand, keep in mind I resemble a younger Jack Nicholson (a lot). So here she is presented with a screaming man with an ice pick in his hand that looks as crazy as Jack in the Shining. She quickly left the house and returned with a police escort and always had an escort from the point forward. My wife said it was the most frightening things she had ever seen. The ice pick was a coincident and I was not holding it to intimidate her but looking back I can see how crazy that scene must have looked.
I wonder whether they'd start chasing false reports if somebody made a list of every DCF employee, their close friends and family, and called DCF on every single one of them.
day by day my doubt in power of USA is increasing, it seems to be headed on path of Britain or worse Japan
I read loads of really interesting and eye-opening posts about all sorts of non-tech subjects... but I don't feel they should be on Hacker News to the detriment of other tech stories that could be on the front page.
Outside the US nudity is not so taboo. In my daughter's kindergarten (a nice private school in Southeast Asia) boys and girls share the same bathroom, with no private stalls, and no door on the entrance. Everyone sees everything -- passers-by included. Meanwhile, in the US, nudity is synonymous with sex, and good people have to worry about things like this.
EDIT: Corrected typo: Lets -> Let's
I'm not saying that makes it sensible, but it does bring the American treatment of them closer together than they seem at first glance.
To my mind it merely identifies hypocrisy.
So in the progressions, when would the censors put the black boxes over the "naughty" bits? Would there be a difference in that for the man and the woman?
Much of the country was built and populated by puritans. State's rights and a lack of urbanization allowed tight-knit communities of like-minded people to keep anyone different away. This created a sort of moral echo chamber, that carried their views into modernity without ever being tempered via intellectual or moral challenge. And the US system of representation gives those rural communities quite a bit of power over national mores.
As for the rhetorical: it depends on context. It always depends on context. Nudity isn't necessarily less harmful.
Hiding violence and death away from children can be just as harmful as hiding nudity.
Whether honest non-exposure might be fine is beyond even an academic concern. It's overwhelmingly improbable that a child could be raised without being exposed to those things; short of willful sheltering.
I'm going to stretch my neck out (as it were) and say that most people in the world butcher their own meat and at least kill some of the meat they consume. Granted outside the wealthy regions this is rarely going to be large animals but still.
Many many peoples are exposed daily to the threat of major violence to themselves too.
I'll tentatively accept that the majority of humans don't directly witness brutal violence against other humans in their lives.
On the other hand, I hear that a really long time ago women always had really long dresses and the only skin you ever saw was their face and hands. So maybe the rules really are being relaxed, and kids just don't get an exemption any more.
It gradually became less and less common, but it didn't actually become taboo until relatively recently. Maybe 1996-1999 if I had to put a timeframe on it. This is back when we were approaching the millenium so there was momentum behind 'modern' reforms, and at the same time public opinion was mostly determined by glossy magazines like Newsweek. So around a lot of 'glossy' policy was enacted based on this formulaic and simplistic journalism style, which was good for covering the school shooting of the week but not so good for anything else.
Culture is your Operating System http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c8an2XZ3MU
Stuff to ponder about! :O
http://www.montrealsciencecentre.com/documents/csm/images/Im...
It was advertising this: http://www.montrealsciencecentre.com/exhibitions/sex-a-tell-...
"He loved Big Brother."
We use "Orwellian" a little too loosely but for the victims of this, it seems almost that bad.
I guess it's kind of a pain to be the target of an investigation, but nobody's life was ruined.
I'm sure you've met someone who did something stupid, and every time you come across them it springs to mind. How would you like it if that was you, and the something stupid was being accused of was child pornography? Everyone who heard about it didn't necessarily hear the resolution or the circumstances.
... This is the longer and cleaner version of the "you can build a thousand bridges" anecdote.
Ruined maybe not, but based on the article and other comments in this thread there is clearly a lasting effect felt after having to go through such horrendous circumstances.
The uncertainty, anger, frustration, guilt, depression etc are all things which do not just stop when the case is dropped.
All these people needed was for the person making the original accusation to think for themselves and make a rational judgment rather than simply "do their jobs".
a) If the system worked, the initial photos would have been checked and then the complaint would have been disregarded.
b) If the system worked, innocent parents who provided a loving and safe home for their children would not have been treated like criminals.
c) If the system worked, the state would not have kept pushing in the hope of getting some sort of conviction in a case where it was manifestly clear that nothing had happened.
d) If the system worked, the children in the case would not have been subjected to invasive and personal questioning by government functionaries.
Accusations of pedophilia do ruin lives, and no one should ever have to go through the hell of proving their innocence in a case as flimsy as this.
Your statements (a) and (c) seem sound to me. (b) and possibly (d) is a necessary part of the system. If guilt can not be ascertained without investigation then practically some innocent people will be treated like criminals by being investigated. (d) may be a necessary part of such investigation depending on the allegations.
That said in the OP's case I don't think (d) should have happened and I'm concerned that the investigators could have effectively opened the door to improper sexual activity by asking the children questions like "did an adult touch you between your legs" or something that would lead the child to see this as a forbidden fruit that they had previously not regarded but now desired to explore.
Really the harm seems to be in they way people are being treated not in trying to prevent child abuse etc...
On the other hand, the author is a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt. If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If they were treated any other way, there would have been a public outrage.
Think about the officers handling this case. There is absolutely zero incentive for them to handle this case differently. If the accused turn out to be guilty, then they better have handled this case with the utmost seriousness. Any leniency can possibly lead to a scandal. And media love childmolesting scandals, so the officers will be part of a nation if not worldwide scandal. They will be singled out, their mistake will be broadcasted for the whole world to see, and they effictively lose their job.
If people turn out to be innocent, psyches have been damaged, it's bad but they'll get over it. More importantly, maybe a complaint will be filed, they will have done the right thing within the rules, and case is closed.
And I am a software developer, exactly the kind of people who cause computer viri, identity theft, spams and scams?
That's the difference.
Journalists are looking for scandals, stories that score lots of eyeballs.
If that's true, then we have a huge problem.
Basically I'm hearing this in that comment: If someone is innocent, they are innocent until proved guilty. If someone is guilty, they are guilty until proved innocent.
The problem with that idea is supremely obvious.
If you look at a picture of naked kids in non-sexual situations and think you're seeing something sexual then there is something wrong with you. Full stop. Either you've been abused, you're an abuser yourself or you've been horribly brain washed. Any of these possibilities makes you more of a risk than the person who shot the photos.
Taking this a step further, people need to start filing scary "child pornography" charges at judges, lawyers and everyone else who participates in this kind of insanity. If the judge doesn't take one look at the photo, realize it's nothing and dismiss the case then he might well be a consumer of child pornography. Otherwise, why didn't he realize it was innocent? If a few people in power start getting their lives ruined by this nonsense maybe it would stop.
For the untrained eye such photo's as in this case may have shocked him/her and prompted the knee-jerk reaction of calling the police. You are right in part; I think the main problem is that, absurdly, any images of naked children are starting to worry people. Part of that is founded in fact; you will find people with thousands of images of different children running around naked on beaches/parks/camping trips. But, clearly, in this case it is just a family camping trip and the clerk has either refused or is unable to process that.
I recall that a few years ago I was taking pics at a family wedding and happened, while taking shots of my cousins running round playing, to take a shot which included my youngest cousin doing a handstand with her skirt over her head. It was a completely innocent picture; and if I was ever investigated for CP it would never be flagged as CP - but my Aunt was absolutely insistent I should delete the photo.
And that is the sort of society we live in.
What is absurd is a situations where natural actions (taking photos of your children) become, randomly, life ruining [1]. You say my suggestion is rude but this is in fact exactly what happened to the author of the story. If one of these two people (the author or the clerk) had to have their life ruined because of the chance that they might be dangerous I would pick the clerk as he/she is actually exhibiting bizarre behavior.
Further, having an extreme reaction to natural things indicates some kind of problem. I can't know if the clerk was sexually aroused by the photos, felt guilty and reacted extremely to fight against those feelings that he/she knew were wrong. I can only see the extreme action they took. I can't know what triggered it, but it's definitely a problem and more worthy of looking into than the random innocent by-stander who triggered this persons episode.
[1] If this were isolated it might not be such a huge issue, but it's happening quite a lot (relatively). Remember the recent case where photos of a 17 year old girl in a bikini were investigated as child pornography? What about the guy who was naked in his house making breakfast and was accused of being an exhibitionist? Couple this with the insane "child abuser register" the US has and things look pretty alarming.
No it isn't. You hear about some of these cases because, rightly, it occasionally hits the media but in general it is not happening a lot (comparatively anyway).
People are getting too cagey over child nudity and prudish in general; but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender.
I would pick the clerk as he/she is actually exhibiting bizarre behavior.
Not to my mind. They are reacting irrationally to images that disturb him/her; it does not make them a sex offender.
I see what you are saying; but I don't think it comes as a result of people being abused or secretly being pedophiles; it is more a reflection of a society where we are slowly becoming terrified of the "bogeyman" pedophile at every turn.
To put your point another way; if you saw, through a living room window, someone strangling another person whilst having sex with them would you call the police? And would it be because you found it sexually arousing? or is because you were worried about the person? See the difference.
I put on the relatively tag for a reason. I heard of about 7 cases in one year, each one of them completely insane. That's a lot relative to where I'm living in Europe where I've heard of zero such cases. It's also a lot relative to how many should have happened, also zero.
>but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender.
No, most people behave this way because they've been horribly and dangerously brain washed into behaving this way. So how do you "fix" them?
Imagine some less extreme behaviors that people could do and how it would be greeted. Imagine some intimate situation like a young man proposing to a young lady in a restaurant. Suddenly some jerk walks up and loudly farts in his face. How would this be reacted to? I can think of a lot of potential reactions, all of which would be extreme enough to let the drive by farter know that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.
Now lets step it up a notch. Someone urinates on the floor in the middle of a semi-crowded area. Now we're talking jail time, right? Maybe the person grew up in a culture where this was acceptable or even expected. Doesn't matter, they did something more extreme than the last example and will be greeted with a more extreme result.
Now back to our clerk. This person looked at some normal family photos and reacted by ruining someone's life. I think this person finding themselves the subject of such an investigation would be appropriate and effective at teaching people that this kind of bizarre behavior is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.
>Not to my mind. They are reacting irrationally to images that disturb him/her; it does not make them a sex offender.
Neither did the person taking the photos. Remember, my statement was if I had to pick between the two of them. Would you seriously pick the author in that situation? Then I have some bad news for you...
>if you saw, through a living room window, someone strangling another person whilst having sex with them would you call the police?
Bad example. Enough people are into such behavior that I absolutely would not call the police. Further, if I did I would fully expect to find myself on the business end of a peeping Tom case.
But if we changed your example to me just seeing someone being strangled then I would call the police. Because I saw something extreme happening. I would not call the police if I saw two people hugging. See the difference?
There are similar cases over here (in Europe), you just don't hear about them (for reasons I've never got to the bottom of). 7 cases may seem a lot, and you are right it should be 0. But relative to the number of successful child abusers caught it's a pretty good statistic.
No, most people behave this way because they've been horribly and dangerously brain washed into behaving this way. So how do you "fix" them?
Agreed; this didn't seem to be what you were saying before. But now I see you were less suggesting they were sex offenders but that they should face the consequences too & this would limit their desire for prosecutions.
I disagree with this being the right approach. Where this process failed was the first officer who thought the images were fine but still escalated it; that officer should be someone experienced, qualified and serious enough to have said "no, this is not a concern" - perhaps after quickly talking to the parents.
Now back to our clerk. This person looked at some normal family photos and reacted by ruining someone's life. I think this person finding themselves the subject of such an investigation would be appropriate and effective at teaching people that this kind of bizarre behavior is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.
This is a completely different point to one you were originally making - at least how it reads anyway. And I agree; there should be consequences if you deliberately ruin someones life. But if the clerk is acting in good faith (in a way that doesn't sync with the examples you highlighted) so I'd argue a serious word/caution is sufficient to show him/her that they made a mistake and to take more care in the future.
Would you seriously pick the author in that situation? Then I have some bad news for you...
I'd pick neither. end of.
But if we changed your example to me just seeing someone being strangled then I would call the police. Because I saw something extreme happening. I would not call the police if I saw two people hugging. See the difference?
Yes. Sadly it is not a comparable example - because two people hugging is not associated with anything sexual or inappropriate. I was trying to highlight the idea that you might see something that others found sexually enticing but that simply concerned you - in such a case you are not a sexually excited by the event, just concerned. This is the mentality of the clerk; and you are right it is a result of a messed up society.
What should have happened (assuming the clerk is still concerned enough in this perfect situation to have called the police) is the police man should have called the parents, chatted informally to assure himself that it was as he suspected and then left it at that.
The failure here appears to be societies attitude to child nudity followed quickly by maddening bureaucracy.
Yes, sorry I wasn't clear enough. If it came out a bit ambiguous that's because it is for me. I suspect that in most cases none of the people involved are abusers but I maintain that there is something wrong with some of them (especially the officials seeking convictions where a normal person would realize the material in question is innocent).
>But if the clerk is acting in good faith
This a case where I'm ambiguous on. On the one hand the Clerk was probably just trying to stay out of trouble so it was it was the fault of the Cop for not dropping it or other officials who continued to peruse it further.
On the other hand "just doing my job" is no excuse. Further I would punish blind "job doers" much more aggressively than anyone else. They are the enablers of atrocities. No one would have ever heard of everyone's favorite Godwin subject were it not for (literally) armies of "just doing my job"s. Imagine what would have happened in Iraq if the US enlisted soldiers had simply refused to go there. Most any (if not all) atrocity one could name were enabled by people who more often than not didn't like what they were doing but ultimately did as they were told.
>I'd pick neither. end of.
Then your statement doesn't apply to what I said. I said that if I had to (e.g. gun is pointed at me, etc.) pick one of those two I would pick the Clerk.
>because two people hugging is not associated with anything sexual or inappropriate.
Nor were the photos in question.
>I was trying to highlight the idea that you might see something that others found sexually enticing but that simply concerned you - in such a case you are not a sexually excited by the event, just concerned.
I get what you were trying to do but I still maintain that if a person sees something normal and is disturbed by it then they have a disconnect. Something has to highlight this clearly for them so they realize they have the issue and can fix it. We should not cater to such eccentricity as this causes it to get even more extreme.
>What should have happened (assuming the clerk is still concerned enough in this perfect situation to have called the police) is the police man should have called the parents, chatted informally to assure himself that it was as he suspected and then left it at that.
That would have been a better result to be sure.
Legally, I'm going to be an adult within the month. I'm certainly not a parent, but I am a kid, and I haven't been so brainwashed as to lose sight of what pre-adolescence is like. I could go on and on about the funny, stupid, and downright embarrassing things I did, particularly before I turned "double-digits".
Side-point: Giving these decidedly private photos to a public agency to develop was an absolutely stupid thing to do, but by no stretch of the imagination can I blame everything on him because of it. That's a lesson learned, for sure, but the idea that anything else he did was "wrong" just blows my mind. I'd like to say to some of the salon commenters... don't impose your personal morals on everyone else, please. I know there's a fantastic one-word term for people who do that, but it escapes me.
But that's the way we used to live. Before digital, very few of us could develop our own film. Just like most of us buy our beer at a store rather than making it- and therefore some agency could get a handle on how much we consume. In the future this may look like a stupid thing to do, but now it's all we really have and nobody thinks about it twice. My parents had no alternative to developing the pictures of me at a store.
I think the best option is to do as the person in the article did and deal with it in a cooperative and respectful manner, as much as we may resent it.
If I'm ever in a situation similar to this, I will heavily weigh moving, or at least sending my wife and kids out of state, before entrusting my family to a random bureaucrat.