Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>>   Which then means that what is and isn't illegal depends on what happens
>> to be politically correct that month.
> 
> More like what one particular state employee feels like doing that day.
> It's entirely possible the person who took them away is getting
> disapproval from his/her coworkers, too.
> 
> Remember that you'd likely never have heard of this 30 years ago, and
> that if the situation winds up with the accuser getting reprimanded and
> the kids being returned, you'll likely not hear of that either.
> 

Most cases of a child being removed from households never make the news.
And, sadly, it is very hard to get children away from abusive parents
for anything other than a short amount of time.

In some states* the child welfare folks will remove children from a home
upon the allegation that something untoward is going on. They, and the
police, then have a very short amount of time to show a judge that
something harmful to the child is taking place, or the kid gets returned
to their parents. The alternative to this is to allow a child to stay in
an abusive environment where the parents know they are being
investigated. At some point, it was codified into law that the first was
preferable to the latter.

It results in some humorous and some sad cases. I know of one case where
a girl called the police, saying her mother had kidnapped the girl's
daughter. Police show up, and take the baby away. Turns out the
grandmother was babysitting and told the daughter something she didn't
want to hear. In the same county, a baby died because, after being
taking from the parents for 48 hours several times on reports of child
endangerment or abuse, welfare workers could not make a solid case that
they would harm the baby and they did. If I remember the newspaper
correct, they were convicted years after the baby's death.

*Would say most, but I only know about a few.

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