No identifying information is another big red flag, the parents of the free range kids hassled for letting their kids walk a mile to the park were all over media but this even more horrible (if true) story of kids being taken away for playing in the back yard is totally anonymous? Come on.
The bar to get me to hate on bureaucratic drones is pretty low, over shoot it too much and you take the fun away.
http://www.freerangekids.com/boy-11-plays-basketball-in-own-...
And given the steady stream of well-documented, actual and equally ridiculous cases like this on Free Range Kids, I doubt this is a prank.
I like alternate media picking up on buried stories, I just wish they could do it without lying but perhaps this is why the stories are not picked up, they are more complicated than reason.com's simple tales.
Skenazy doesn't even need to be biased or dishonest for this story not to be the whole truth (or true at all); she just has to not fact-check it.
I'd be curious if anyone came up with a way to independent corroborate any part of this story.
Romanesko posted it to his Facebook feed yesterday after a journalist forwarded it to him calling it "bullshit". People have been picking the story apart since then. Some telling bits:
* Florida doesn't have "Child Protective Services", the proper noun Skenazy repeatedly uses; Florida has a DCF.
* Skenazy's story claims that the parents were unable to visit their child because the relative they left them with lived across county lines. But a felony charge doesn't prevent you from crossing county lines.
* By Skenazy's own account (I'm surprised I missed this): the kids were placed in longer-term foster care because the "slightly problematic" relative they left them with put them back in foster care without informing the parents.
* It's apparently not normal process in Florida for neglect charges to create both civil and criminal cases. I think it's also possible Skenazy, who is not an attorney, is confused: there may be civil-looking paperwork required to place the kids in temporary care.
* A careful reading of the original story suggests that the kid(s?) may have been locked out longer than 90 minutes; the timespans you have to account for are: the time before the neighbor noticed the kid(s?) out in the rain, the time after that where the kids remain outside unattended until the police arrive, and then the time it took for the police to wait at the house with the kids (which also doesn't sound right; why didn't they just take the kids to the station?).
What we actually know right now:
* Somebody set of parents in Florida, who may or may not live in the same place (the single page of court documentation posted lists them separately) had some sort of run-in with juvenile court involve one or more kids.
* A lawyer reviewed paperwork not yet released and said that it corroborates the parents story.
Of course, the parents could be reporting accurately the actions of the police on that day, but leaving out a bunch of additional context from prior to that day.
That said, this particular story is from: Lenore Skenazy is host of the reality show “World’s Worst Mom” on the Discovery Life Channel, starting Jan. 22. She is also a public speaker and founder of the book and blog Free-Range Kids.
That doesn't make it wrong. But it clearly comes from someone who is on a particular side of the issue. And a quick search doesn't uncover original reportage from elsewhere. So color me skeptical.
It might just be that in a country with 300 million people, this is going to happen once in a while. It may or may not represent a general erosion of parent's rights and civil liberties.
I believe that's still considered true, the "good parents" will instead arrange for the kids to have lots of supervised activities and organized play dates. It's all about making sure the kids have no space to make their own mistakes.
Given how overloaded CPS usually are, this article fails the sniff test.
Millenials are called weak, entitled and useless, but wait for the next cohort of "bright" minds who are gonna lead this country. Will they be able to even feed themselves? Is it even safe to teach a kid how to cook an egg?
In this case (assuming this story is true, but there's no shortage of similar stories if this one isn't), it took a fucking child to have the nerve to state the obvious:
* But then, according to Cindy, "My son spoke up." He said he wanted to talk to the judge. Surprised, their lawyer asked the boy: Did he have the courage to go through with this? And would he tell the truth? The boy said yes. "He went back there and spoke to the judge for about ten minutes," said Cindy. "And then the judge came out and called the two lawyers to the bench and talked to them for about 10 or 15 minutes. And with that, our lawyer came to us and said that if we admitted that we didn't know that it was wrong to [let our son] stay in the backyard, but that we know now that it's wrong and we will never let it happen again, and that we will explain this to our son, he would let the children come with us."
Cindy and Fred promised. The judge released the kids and closed the case. *
I wonder, how does this happen, and why does it happen mostly in western countries?
My best theory is, unless you are a true revolutionary/disruptor, if you are just well-above-average skill, but not Elon Musk level, your easiest ride is just playing the system. This case (ignoring that it shouldn't have even happened in the first place) could have been closed immediately, if people in the justice system were interested in administering justice. But they're not - they are interested in revenue. Stretching cases like this out for weeks / months increases (or at least maintains) federal funding requirements, but it also pulls external money into the system (defense fees) that goes to your brothers and sisters you attended law school with. Think of the $ this one case generated, and it's just a kid hanging out in his back yard!
It's not just the legal system that is like this, although it's one of the worst offenders. I see similar behavior working in IT (in medium to large companies)- things that are obviously easy to fix, problems that aren't difficult to solve (or don't even need solving at all) turn into multi-hundred-thousand, or even multi-million $ projects. And if you say "wait a minute, does this make sense what we're doing", your head will shortly be cut off, because so many people have skin in the game. But if you just keep your mouth shut and go with the flow, you can make an entire career out of it.
In this case some fathers might -- I won't if only because I'm not a father -- might, ..., might, right, what's the term?
CPS abducted his 10 year old daughter: Zuilly makes a bundle selling pretty princess and angel clothes to grand parents for their grand daughters, often just 10. Those princess, angel clothes indicate some of the protective emotions grand parents and parents have for daughters, e.g., Perfect Daughter. In our society, there are strong norms that girls are cared for, protected.
And CPS abducts her? Perfect daughter?
Am I getting to make this situation clear?
Okay, maybe it's her dear dad or her dear uncle, one or both fresh back from Akrapistan, maybe Army Rangers, maybe Seal Team 6. And CPS abducted Perfect Daughter playing safely in her backyard?
CPS might be in line for a Darwin award.
Looks like Perfect Daughter needs two or three very devoted, young, healthy German Shepards or Rotweilers.
CPS overreach is not all just click bait: I know a family, well known coast to coast, in US finance, famous name, wealthy, generous philanthropists. Well, at one point a son of about 8 in the family fell and, maybe, bruised his arm or some such.
Well, somehow CPS paid a visit. Insisted on getting involved. Issued this and that order to the parents.
Absurd. Wacko. Overreach.
If my startup works, I get financially comfortable, and CPS or some such makes trouble for the nephews, nieces, etc. in my family, then I will go to a big, powerful, all-go, never-stop, nail'em to the wall law firm and see just how much legal trouble we can cause CPS and its wackos.
If they want a legal fight and my checkbook is much thicker than theirs, then bring it on. It will be a good purpose for my startup work.
I don't like gumment wackos hurting families and children.
It's happened. It shouldn't.
Standard: Some bad parents actually do exist. So, with a few such examples, some people who want to get attention get some laws passed and set up CPS with some really big powers, e.g., ones that violate little things like due process. Some of the laws mention felonies.
Then the CPS department gets created, funded, and staffed. Then a phone call comes in, and CPS swings into action.
Then, CPS wants to look busy, do their job, believes that they are now responsible for the child, wants to make sure nothing goes wrong where they could be blamed, so take full control of the life of the child, as their rules say, and to heck with anything like due process, the actual good of the child, the good of the family, etc. Instead, CPS becomes just law and rules driven.
So, CPS is brain-dead, dysfunctional, dangerous, destructive, demented, deranged, etc. Why? They are just following the law and their rules to avoid any blame.
So, CPS put a torpedo just below the waterline of that totally innocent family. They did psychological damage to the child; they harmed the sense of security of the family; they wasted the time of the family; the may have wrecked the family finances due to the legal costs.
Earlier tonight I watched the Nova program on the June 6, 1944 Normandy landing. I was reminded of all the death and destruction fighting Hitler.
But then with something like CPS and US police shooting unarmed Blacks in the back, etc., we are creating disasters out of nothing, nothing at all, disasters, out of nothing, for no good reason.
The judge? He should have found a way to charge the CPS thugs, laughed their case out of court, and put the family back together. Since he didn't, he should get a new career cleaning sidewalks with a tooth brush -- "Nice and clean, now, y'hear?".
CPS must report to a mayor or governor, etc. Well, with enough such stories, the mayor or whomever should ensure that the head of CPS and everyone involved in that case should join the judge in brushing the sidewalks.
Part of the solution is sunlight, e.g., on the Internet.
Too often our government has become just a dangerous enemy of the citizens. The citizens should vote for the needed changes. Due to CPS, every family with children is at risk of essentially just thugs from CPS wrecking their families, a greater risk than a bomb from a terrorist and comparably dangerous.
TSA? Sure, they can steal money and valuables from your luggage and molest your wife and daughters.
Gee, when I was 10 or so, I got a three speed bicycle, and then, especially during the summers, I was gone for hours at a time, sometimes 20 miles round trip. No problems.
I was big for my age: If some CPS types had tried to do something to me, it would have been a fight, a real fight -- I would have defended myself from the CPS attackers. Sure, if I could have found a club, I would have beat them to a bloody pulp -- just ordinary self-defense.
Government wants to grow, like poison ivy or worse. Have to cut it back. The key way: Just cut their budgets. How to do that? Sure, vote. Then get rid of the government thugs who attack citizens and get lower taxes.
Read. Complain. Vote. Solve the problem. That's what our democracy is for and some of why we really need democracy. Else the government will grow and grow and become a hostile occupying force in our country like Hitler occupied Poland.
In Normandy is a cemetery with, as I recall from the Nova program, 9000 graves of US soldiers who fought for our freedom. Well, we should not let out of control government do to us what Hitler would have done.
I tend to agree with your general theme though, that what we're seeing is the result of system systems that have been funded, and now are doing what they were created to do.
That is, for government as a protector, too often the cure is worse than the disease.
Leaving out any issues of rights, that's the biggest issue here: that children get moved from a safe situation into a more dangerous one, in the name of keeping them safe.
Take this recent case in Australia [1]. A father cared enough about his child to voluntarily put him in the state's care, whilst he sorted himself out. The child never came home, as the state placed the child in an unsafe home, and he drowned.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/parents-demand-answers-after-toddl...
In this case there is no reason to hide the names, dates, or location (as the neighbors already know and the court records are open), and there is no way to ascertain the credibility of the news source.
Absence of both a credible source and a credible reporter to vouch for the anonymous source breaks the chain of credibility - the article might as well be made up, and it usually is.
Another suspicious factor is that the claims are so outlandish - the more outrageous the claim, the more likely its a fake. When a reader is frightened or outraged he is more likely to disregard caution and share the story, and so it goes viral. For that reason outlandish stories are more likely to get shared regardless of merit, as opposed to less exceptional stories that get shared more inline with their truthfulness, and so statistically speaking an outlandish story is more likely to be a fake scare, whereas a mundane story is more likely to be true.
Yet another factor to consider is absence of an attempt to get the other side of the story - no mention of trying to contact CPS, or District Attorney to get their comments on the case.
I'm going to go a bit off topic, but I want to comment on this snippet:
> [The kids had been eating] [o]nly cereal, for the past few days. That's not going to kill anyone, obviously. But if you're arresting parents for not supervising their kids for 90 minutes, it's more than a little hypocritical.
There's probably a good reason for that: the foster parents couldn't get the kids to eat anything else! Perhaps they were really nervous and uncomfortable? When I'm nervous, it's hard to eat other foods like vegetables and meats. Sometimes cereal is all I can stomach. I could only imagine how those poor, confused kids felt.
We were trained to feed the kids what they would eat. That means if they want a hot dog every night, you give them a freaking hot dog every night. Sometimes keeping the kid within whatever is left of their comfort zone is more important than good nutrition. As time goes on, you start mixing things up and start giving them better food. But out the gate, the most important thing is to help the kids feel comfortable.
People like the author of this article seem to love to paint foster parents in a bad light. They have this weird mentality I don't understand. They don't care about the facts, they're just looking for anything to make everyone from the state to look like incompetent scum. Look even at this quote:
> The kids are attending "play" therapy.
Maybe it's because the whole article is horribly negative and lacking any kind of reference (even all the names are made up to "protect the innocent" or whatever), but I feel like that is sarcasm. And the sarcasm in that sentence demonstrates how much the author doesn't know. "Play" therapy is a real thing, and it really helps the kids. It's not some crazy witchcraft the state thought up. The kids might've been "normal" before this all happened, but it's important to get kids in this situation (even the ones that weren't abused/neglected/etc, like the children in the article) to make sure they're getting the help that they need to cope with the CURRENT situation. We always try to get our foster kids in play therapy, even if they act completely "normal" and understanding of everything. The thing I don't want is to think the kid is okay and then find out they've been holding it all back.
Great insight. Kids at that age are looking for parental/adult approval and they know that the adults around them want them to be "okay." They can hide a lot of emotions if they think they'll be loved more for being "normal."
> No offense to foster parents, there is a great need to take kids in after REAL disasters
None taken, but you seem to think foster parents are somehow involved in the removal process. Here's how it really works:
-Phone rings -Hello Mr. Foster, I have 3 siblings that I need to place. [Description of what they know]. Do you think this would be a good fit for your family? -Yes -Thank you. Can you pick them up at [location]?
I have no chance to say, "sorry, I believe you shouldn't have removed them. Please send them home." I mean, I can say that. But it wouldnt do any good. only the judge can make that call (in my state). I will, however, have an opportunity to expressy opinion based on how I feel after talking with the kid(s) over a period of time.
Obviously what is described in this article is a horrible situation. All I'm saying is that the way they describe the foster parent feeding the kids only cereal is most likely not hypocritical or even a problem. It's more likely them focusing on getting the kid to eat anything.
Because the skeptic in me says that while CPS might be pretty bad, it's also not inconceivable that the aggrieved parents might leave out key details of the story. So I'd like to hear what CPS (or really, any other source) has to say before I get too up-in-arms here.
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the...
I got out of the car one day to feed the parking meter next to the driver side window. “Don’t, Mommy. Don’t. The police will come.” I went to let the dog into our front yard while he was watching his morning cartoon. “Mommy, no!!! The police.”
One afternoon after his swim lesson, he came out of the bathroom and for a second didn’t see me — I’d kneeled down to get his shoes from their cubby. When I looked up he was crying. “Mommy, mommy, I thought someone was going to steal me.”
That evening I sat him down and tried to explain it. I told him that he was right, that mommy had left him in the car for a few minutes one time and that was a mistake. I wasn’t supposed to do that. But it was all going to be fine now. Mommy wasn’t going to jail. And no one was going to kidnap him!
“Most people,” I told him, “are not trying to hurt you. Most people are good people. Do you understand? You don’t have to be afraid?”
He nodded slowly, but I could see from his face that he only half believed me."
We need to contrast this to stories like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677863 [How my father gave me a terrifying lesson at 10] which received overwhelmingly positive feedback on here.
We are living in a society that has been induced with fear so much that parents give away the freedom even of their kids. I wonder what kind of people these kids will grow to become. And I wonder how many parents ask themselves this question.
I realise that in the grand scheme, these are fairly unique but you simply don't hear about such things happening in Europe, in Australia or in the middle and far East. Perhaps it's a case of similar cases happening in other nations but just not reported on so much.
Why do we keep reading stories like this and the deluge of police brutality and other wacky stories coming out of the USA?
Perhaps more accurately, the us has a large population. It's roughly the same size as all of western europe. With 350 million independent agents running around, you'll get some funky edge cases.
And C, I think everyone is susceptible to abuse of power. There are a million stories of HOA (home owner associations) making crazy complicated rules because of smart yet bored homebodies with nothing better to do.
The U.S. has certain freedoms, like self defense, that you don't see in the U.K. Freedom of speech is pretty cool, but you get these weird effects where things advertised as "news" aren't actually required to tell the truth. So it's not all sunshine and lollypops.
Classic puritanism tried to take comfort knowing that people not acting in a godly way would just go to hell when they died. The U.S. has a long tradition of everyone knowing everyone else's business. And being judgmental of it. Sometimes echoes of that ring down through the ages and we get weird laws. We get the moral imperatives, but can't really rely on bad parents going to hell, so we get kind of crazy.
I suppose with a nation as big as the US and the media presence there, it would probably be much more difficult to hide such stories as it would in various European nations.
So, in Victoria at least, it was recently made illegal to leave your kids in the car for any length of time. Going inside to pay at the petrol station? Take your kids with you.
Admittedly it's not going to end you up in the middle of the story in the article, and you're going to have to be pretty unlucky to find a cop who's enough of a dickhead to apply this law apropos of no other issues, but technically it's now illegal to do so.
3)(a) "Neglect of a child" means:
1. A caregiver's failure or omission to provide a child with the care, supervision, and services necessary to maintain the child's physical and mental health, including, but not limited to, food, nutrition, clothing, shelter, supervision, medicine, and medical services that a prudent person would consider essential for the well-being of the child; or
2. A caregiver's failure to make a reasonable effort to protect a child from abuse, neglect, or exploitation by another person.
Neglect of a child may be based on repeated conduct or on a single incident or omission that results in, or could reasonably be expected to result in, serious physical or mental injury, or a substantial risk of death, to a child.
If I'm reading it correctly, an incident like this could have been legal grounds to charge the parents with neglect if and only if it was repeated conduct - e.g., they had repeatedly locked the kid out of the house. If not, any judge would through this case out immediately.
Note: I'm not a lawyer and may be entirely wrong.
1. (Defendant)
a. [willfully] [by culpable negligence] failed or omitted to provide (victim) with the care, supervision, and services necessary to maintain (victim’s) physical or mental health.
b. failed to make a reasonable effort to protect (victim) from abuse, neglect, or exploitation by another person.
2. (Defendant) was a caregiver for (victim).
3. (Victim) was under the age of 18 years.
Florida jury instructions.
I hoped at 14 they declare the kids grown up.
I would say it is the 'common standard' of what constitues a negligence that is the twisted thing here. Normal kids don't need a 24 hour supervisor once they go to school.
”On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they’re evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. (...)”
Flagged.
I'm actually more shocked that there are prosecutors and even judges that go along with this BS. I can believe one insane activist CPS worker here and there, but an entire chain of people to back them up??
That's what boggles my mind the most. Every time we hear about CPS they're overworked and have to deal with horrors I don't even want to imagine. But how do they have time to waste voluntarily ruining peoples' lives?
As I see things we lost our soul during this time and have not yet recovered it. At this time if you traveled overseas the first question people would ask is if it was safe. Justifying laws and policies in the name of safety was the way to get compliance from the citizenry. It still persists today though people are starting to see the bullshit. Note that the usual way politicians justify curbs on the internet is by mentioning child pornography.
1) The cultural trust and norms in our country are dead. Everything gets the most superficial consideration, there's no basis of reasonableness such that even the judge doesn't stop the machine, power is so distributed that there's no reasonable authority in place, and people like CPS -- who have difficult and challenging and necessary jobs -- don't know how to recognize "normal" when they see it. American has no "normal" anymore, and everyone acts based on their greatest fears, informed by our weird local news, NCIS/Law&Order fear-mongering mentality. We used to have class divisions that kept things a little normal within class lines, now class divisions have been destroyed such that everyone's caught in a race to the bottom.
1b) I like to think I'm not really subject to #1, being an upper middle class white professional... but I live in a relatively urban environment, with a pre-teen child, and there's a sense that one socially construed "accident" can send me into a can of worms that can take years to climb out of. So, until then, I'll assume I'm relatively untouchable, because I'm not really sure what else my option is. I can see relocating, to one of my international anchor points.. permanently, at some point.
2) There's a strong tinge of "fuck them" or "they have no right" or "they shouldn't" in a lot of American interactions now, whether formal or otherwise. People are endlessly bothered by things they aren't affected by. I mean, it's not everywhere...
American culture is now a corporate construct designed to make everyone in its demographic purview feel strongly about something that doesn't matter to them, whether it's escapees with big dicks or the Kardashians. Radio plays the same 10 songs over and over and over again so you have to hit scan and your radio takes you through stations back to news anchor talking about news that doesn't matter. And if you get home and turn on the TV you're assaulted by the local news anchors with "news you can trust" or weather reports "you can count on", and when you ignore that your co-worker at work will just force it down your throat anyway, and you'll pretend to go along with it so as to have some minor smidgeon of false rapport, lest you come off as anti-social or.. critical.
I was just at a farmer's market tonight where kids ran free and cops patted kids on the head and dogs were off leash and people were eating ice cream and yelling and laughing. But it just takes one person, with a spiteful "I'll get 'em..." trigger to bring an invisible avalanche into the room. I think it's worse in urban areas and in suburban areas, which is why I've been living in medium sized "towns" with urban centers. There seems to be less of that in that kind of neighborly construct. But neither can we talk about places like urban California, suburban California, and rural California in equal terms that cover those places, but also midwestern areas or southern areas or bible belt areas. We're not one country anymore, and we have no norms, and people are always told that someone, somewhere is taking shit from them, whether it's terrorists, the emboldened, or the entitled. There are each of those, but fewer bothering each of us in actuality. But lots of people can't see the normal in the normal anymore, either.
You're mentioning you're upper middle class...middle class doesn't exist anymore, you're a peasant like the rest of us.
You're right on the other hand about living in rural areas. I moved with my wife and kids from a big city 7 years ago to a small village and never regretted that decision.
