I haven't followed closely the taking away of 400 children from their parents in Texas. If you want the details The Headmistress at The Common Room has been all over this.
It has bothered me that the Texas Child Protection Service just yanked all 400 children with little due process. I liked Michele Catalano's column Even Polygamists Are Innocent Until Proven Guilty. The United States is based on rule of law and due process. One of the fundamentals is we are assumed innocent until proven guilty.
Michele makes an interesting point:
"Texas has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the U.S. Why isn’t child protective services going into all those households and removing the pregnant teens from their parents? There is obviously some kind of permissiveness going on in those homes where the teens did not receive the education necessary to know how to prevent pregnancy. They might get pregnant again. Swoop in and take them away from their parents, because they might end up in the same situation again. Is that a stretch? Maybe, but it seems to me that the zealousness of Texas protective services overruled their ability to figure out how to determine fact from truth. Or maybe they didn’t even care to do that in the first place."
Michele is making the point that there is a double standard.
Janine and I have been doing foster care for eight months now. We know that there are children suffering abuse. In our county 85% of the children taken are suffering from neglect. Real abuse happens, but is rarer that you might think given how the media reports.
CPS are suppose to investigate and remove children when the children are in danger.
It is clear that very few of the 400 children might have been in danger.
The CPS made a huge mistake. In a just world individuals would be demoted and fired. I'm afraid that little will really happen. Even with the recent court ruling, few children are being returned to their parents.
(hat tip: Instapundit)
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Technorati tags: Texas, Child, Protective, Services, abuse
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