The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).
In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.
Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.
And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.
It’s horrible what a determined harasser can get away with due to bureaucracy and a simple lack of looking before they leap when it comes to government agencies and police.
And they almost never get caught. If they do get caught, there’s often no legal recourse because the laws in this country regarding harassing others are absolute dogshit.
Canada is better in some ways … although we have a lot of room for improvement. Provincial gov’ts set their own standards and rules, but in the province where I was a CFS investigator we had access to back files on individuals that would be checked as soon as a call came in.
We also weren’t allowed to check cupboards because simply being poor is NOT a valid reason to take kids away.
It’s crazy here. A bully at my daughter’s middle school doxxed her on Discord and kept making prank phone calls. The school wouldn’t do anything and there’s basically nothing legally we could do about it either. The phone calls came from a spoofed number, meaning we couldn’t prove who was making them, and apparently no one gets prosecuted for doxxing since no one knows what laws it breaks, so it’s basically legal.
We pulled her out of school because of the bullying in general, and thankfully that girl stopped harassing when my daughter left school. I don’t know what we would do if she had kept it up.
Ugh. I can’t imagine what it’s like raising kids now. I’m an angry person under the best of circumstances let alone someone threatening my child.
I’m glad you were able to find a solution, although it sucks your daughter had to be the one that changed.
I hate to say it but… you hit the bully back. I was bullied in school, and that was the only thing that made a bully stop. Of course, don’t pound them into the ground, and do it when the teachers aren’t looking.
That was advice I got from a teacher, and it changed my life. Before, I’d gone to a teacher when I was bullied. I tried to ignore the bully (he hit me in the head with a rock for ignoring him). I tried asking the bully to stop.
Then one day my science teacher said, ‘sometimes, you have to hit back’.
Reading this makes me so fucking angry. It baffles me how often bullies get away with shit, and even more how their own parents completely lack any form of empathy towards their kid’s victim and will simply refuse to believe their “little angel” is a fucking gremlin. But the bully gets hit back just once, and suddenly the victim gets demonised. Blegh. I hate it so much.
I hope your kid is doing better now.
Drugs were also reported which would be reason to search cupboards. Though a 911 report alone shouldn’t be enough to get a warrant .
how is this due to bureaucracy? you think even less oversight and regulation is the answer? bureaucracy is the exact thing that would prevent things like this.
I had an Internet stalker for a time who was determined to report me to the police for crimes I committed against children. Her proof? God told her. Yes, she literally thought that God spoke to her and told her who was abusing kids.
It was very stressful, but thankfully, apart from harassing me online, she never successfully convinced any police department to arrest me. I guess the police file their “God told me he’s a criminal” reports in “the special filing location” (aka the trash).
Still, it’s scary to think what grief she could use caused me had she been able to hide her crazy a bit better. (I’ve greatly summarized this tale for this post. The full tale takes place over years, involves multiple people including Boy George and the CEO of Firefox, a “worldwide hacking organization,” and more.)
So these government goons get to invade someone’s house, ignore their privacy, take pictures of their kids undressed, and claim “We’re protecting children!” They will fight to hold onto that power.
There is a proven need for the service. But it needs to be better regulated, NOT privatized and states should have rules limiting worker’s authority.
Better regulation is definity needed, in cases like this CPS themselves are practically the abusers.
It’s offensive to exaggerate like this, even just implied. Clearly they need to have some policy against harassment like this.
But when you’re considering this, acknowledge that it’s important for case workers to do things like inspecting the kids’ back and thighs for bruises. It’s important for case workers to be able to follow up on cases where they haven’t initially proven abuse.
The article says, “The agency finds a safety situation requiring removal of a child from a home in only 4% of these cases.” Only?!? You do realize how reluctant they are to remove kids. If they’re actually removing kids in 4% of cases, there’s gotta be significant abuse in at least 12% of cases, likely more.
CPS does an incredibly rough, difficult, and important job. The hate they get for it is insane. Rarely are things black and white. Just like you shouldn’t hate them blindly (or at all), you also shouldn’t support them unconditionally.
They have issues that need fixed, apparently in New York at least. We don’t need excessive hate and hyperbole to get that done.
The article says, “The agency finds a safety situation requiring removal of a child from a home in only 4% of these cases.” Only?!? You do realize how reluctant they are to remove kids. If they’re actually removing kids in 4% of cases, there’s gotta be significant abuse in at least 12% of cases, likely more.
I’d go the other way on that one. “Contempt of caseworker” is a leading cause of removal action. I’d guess legitimate cases of significant abuse and neglect are probably closer to 1%.
While this story is appalling - it’s not a fight for power that’s going on here. It’s the justifiable fear that if they don’t investigate they will be the social worker on the front page of the news paper with the headline “Child abused/dies after this official fails to act”. As system based on good will and ‘better safe than sorry’ is being deliberately abused by the caller. There clearly need to be better mechanisms to prevent this, but it’s not a trivial circle to square.
Prevention isn’t feasible, but reaction certainly is. Caseworkers should be able to go after false complainants in extraordinary circumstances.
Good point. Aggravated false complaints feel like the should be a criminal matter
Similar story in New York. A friend of mine worked for the 911 calling center. Someone would call and claim that there was a murder at the local Planned Parenthood office. By law, police/fire/EMS had to respond every time. The operators would tell the caller that they were diverting resources from actual emergencies, but they kept it up. iirc the DA’s office eventually got involved and they tracked the caller down.
I’m in New York also and a friend had to deal with a fake CPS call. There was another person (let’s call her B) who had an actual issue reported to CPS involving abuse and drug/alcohol abuse around young kids. CPS started to take the kids away from B.
Then my friend had a report filed against her. We’re pretty sure that the report was filed by B as revenge because B thought that my friend was the one who filed the report.
My friend complied with the search of her residence and showed that she wasn’t mistreating her kids in any way. Still, it was frightening because there was still a chance that CPS could walk out saying that they were taking her kids.
I’m really struggling here, can anyone tell me how someone could ever possibly be radicalized against the state? It just doesn’t seem like something any normal person with even the smallest sense of morality would ever do.
ACS: Actually the Criminal State
Someone is taking advantage of the fact nobody wants to be wrong on a child abuse call. You don’t want to be the person who says, let this go, we’ve checked her out twelve times and then something happen.
Not saying it’s right… just saying.
Then please explain to me why the fuck ACS is blocking laws that would require them to read the parents their constitutionally protected rights when conducting these “inspections” and also create a paper trail to stop false reporting and protect families from this sort of harassment.
They aren’t worried about whether or not they are right, they don’t actually want to protect children. They just want to protect their power.
