A recent survey by Emallee Flaherty found that pediatricians only report about 25% of the acute injuries that they SUSPECT were caused by child abuse. I think that makes about as strong a case for better training of health professionals as we’re likely to see.

Twelve years as a businessman turned volunteer guardian ad-Litem watching tortured children in an system that has problems has given me a perspective from the eyes of children that have been severely damaged by their caregivers.

I did read your original statement. You make many broad generalizations and specific accusations that are not accurate.

Read my book (it’s a free download on this website, or you can listen to it for free). How do I know the children in my caseload were abused?

What do you think could cause a four year old to try and kill herself? Or a seven year old to try and kill her five year old sister? She was prostituted by her mother.

Twelve years of watching traumatized children deal with the worst kind of violence and abuse has us on very different sides of this issue.

Your name calling and gross generalizations accomplish the opposite of what you are seeking.

Reason would dictate one issue at a time discussed in a less heated fashion.

Your points about reasonable rational professionals are well taken.

Who are they and how do the children that need them find them?

Best wishes,

MikeT

I have written about parents wrongly accused, and our blog is filled with cases of mishandled child protection and wrong of you to tell me what I believe (or for me to tell you what you believe).

Mistakes are common, social workers need more training and resources, and families certainly need much more help, more crisis nursery centers, more day care, more of allot of things.

Throwing rocks at people trying to do the work does not help.

I’ve experienced four year old suicide attempts and written about seven year old suicides that have left a note.

The illusion is that things will get better if we don’t have a safety net for the children whose lives are endangered by their caregivers (this is what I have experienced).

Yes, we have a faulty system and it needs to be fixed, but something must be in place to help children in terribly troubled families.

Children make unsuitable witnesses in the criminal justice system. There is no protection for children in this nation except for child protection systems.

Our institutions are troubled and do need help to be effective, I agree.

The idea of leaving children to the criminal justice system would lead to divorce like wars in court with five an nine year old children being cross examined by brutal legal questioning.

There is no doubt that children in the U.S. need more protection, more resources, more help, not less.

Twelve years as a guardian ad-Litem proved to me that without a child protection system, sex abuse of children as young as four or five and horrific violence would be allowed to continue unabated.

The criminal justice system will not work to protect a child that cannot hold up under cross examination in court and leaving children in violent abusive homes is almost a death sentence.

Our system in not perfect, but there are many hardworking people trying to make it better.

I suggest that people who care should draw attention to what needs to be changed and work for positive change.

Better training for social workers, health care workers (including mental health workers) and most of all, troubled families.

Child abuse is a crime. It is assault, rape, torture, starvation and homicide. It is violent crime and the evidence is obvious. There is no mystery to it. We must bring science, logic and reason back into the way we handle violent crimes against children. We must base our statistics on scientific evidence, not mere accusations. We must remove the perpetrator, not the child.

We are accusing our citizens of crimes without the use of forensic evidence and denying them due process in a criminal court of law. We are tearing children out of the arms of their mothers and fathers, and their extended families without evidence of a crime. We are warehousing children in foster homes and facilities across the nation without evidence of a crime. We are allowing these children to be exposed to sexual abuse in the custody of the states. We are allowing these children to be used in servitude in the custody of the states. We are allowing these children to be brutalized and murdered in the custody of the states. There are children aging out of foster care into homelessness and crime. Our prisons are filled with children who grew up in foster care. It has to end.

Taking children for profit and abusing them in state custody is not what Walter Mondale had in mind when he signed CAPTA into law in 1974. It is not what Bill Clinton had in mind when he signed ASFA into law in 1997 and it is not what Hilary Clinton had in mind when she wrote “It Takes a Village.”

These leaders entrusted our professionals working within the child protection industry with the resources to protect abused and orphaned children. It was a noble gesture. But child protection let us down. They failed to fulfill their promise to our children, our leaders and to our great nation. They engage in egregious violations of law and human rights abuses. The industry has been taken over by criminals who have no decency or integrity. They have crossed the line. They have turned child protection into a national disgrace and it has to end.

We can’t reform an industry that commits atrocities against children. We must start over with new ideas and a completely different approach. We must change the way we think about child abuse and child protection. We must focus our efforts on helping impoverished families build better lives for themselves, not try to turn a profit on human suffering. It is not only impoverished families who are being subjected to brutality. It is any family who can’t afford a costly legal defense against this brutality that is now vulnerable. Your family could be next. It has to end.

If we tear down the child protection industry and return to the practice of criminal investigations under due process of law in criminal court, the number of cases will drop dramatically. We will have the resources we need to help our impoverished and save billions of tax dollars at the same time. We must do better than this for the future of our nation. *** We must free our mandated reporters from the threat of losing their licenses if they don’t report their suspicions. Let them go back to healing, teaching, protecting and serving without this constant threat hanging over their heads. We must trust that they are competent and intelligent enough to make a distinction between crime and poverty.

We are turning neighbor against neighbor, family against teachers, doctors, police officers, politicians and our country by allowing the criminal element in child protection to continue on this course. It has to end.

I encourage every American to join together to:

1. Call for an immediate nationwide moratorium on all child abuse investigations that do not use forensic evidence;

2. Call for the immediate transfer of power from child protective services to a division of law enforcement specializing in investigations of violent crime. These investigations must include the use of forensic evidence, and must be conducted independently of anyone working within child protection or in the promotion of child protection, with no financial incentives for taking children whatsoever;

3. Call for immediate state and federal investigations of every organization affiliated with child protection and family court across the nation for the crimes of Medicaid fraud, racketeering and all other crimes, including crimes against humanity;

4. Call for the return of children to families who were accused of crimes and denied due process in criminal court keeping in mind that some children may never be going home;

5. Call for a repeal of CAPTA to end mandated reporting and the child abuse hotline and end the practice of central registries for all cases not proven in a criminal court of law.

It has to end!