How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

We had "a run in" with Child Protective Services about 10 years ago. The charge: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (symptoms medically caused; a long story). The "advocates" at CPS had me and my wife (in hospital having just delivered child #2) tried and convicted immediately. Only, I think, thru my self-advocacy directly to the head of pediatrics at the county hospital where my child was being held for examination, resulted in the case being resolved in our favor within a few days (in contrast, I could have talked to the bureaucrats until I died w/o making the slightest headway). Due process? What's that? Various lawyers I consulted advised me to not even hire a lawyer (imagine multiple lawyers saying _that_!) because the law was so stacked against parents, and so completely protective of the CPS bureaucrats, that it would be an utter waste of money with no hope of lawyer-aided "victory".

Miraculously we got our kids back in very short order, however the bureaucrats wouldn't give us the slightest scrap of documentation that the event had ever taken place (and this remains true til now). And needless to say, we received no apology either (at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp guards).

I have nothing good to say about the arbitrary, condescending, totalitarian bureaucrats/"advocates", or the (CA) legislators who wrote such one sided laws ("for the children", no doubt) giving these petty tyrants their obscene powers. I guess many reading this will think "necessary collateral damage by wonderful, diligent state employees pursuing the greater good"; all well and good until _you_ are the ones in their crosshairs: then we'll hear what kind of tune _you_ sing about the glories of the state when you are deprived of due process among other things.

I had a similar run in with DCF, not for child pornography but for accusations of child abuse. I helped out a high school friend who had become a heroin addict (I had no idea what I was getting into), by letting his family and himself live with me while he tried to recover. It ended up that this was a common scam with him and his wife and they use a sob story to get friends to help them out and once they wear out their welcome they move on to the next friend. They would exploit their two girls to make you feel bad about putting two little girls out on the street. This worked very well on me.

Anyways, we finally had had enough and we asked them to leave. I notified his brother of this an his brother had had enough as well, fearing for his two nieces the brother called DCF on them and started an investigation in an attempt to get the girls and provide them some stability (they where in and out of school, watched their father do drugs, and eventually watched him OD - more on that latter).

So, after that the crazy wife calls DCF on every family, that had kids, that they stayed with. So we end up getting cops and a DCF agent knocking on our door, conveniently at 11PM, a time when any dirt bag would be doing their nightly supply of drugs and we get this condescending attitude while we are being read a list of charges being levied against us. My father is there, because he is helping me install a wood floor in my living room and the DCF agent gives me a condescending lecture about unsafe environment for children (I answer well that is why we are doing it while they are in bed). She looked at me and asked what is going on here like it was some illicit activity.

They make us wake the kids up, and then they make them disrobe to see if they have any marks and take them on the back porch to ask them questions. Right before that, I asked if I needed a lawyer and the cop told me they are not needed in these situations.

Anyway, they told us we had to be at the court house for a urine test at 8AM the next morning. To which we complied after calling a lawyer once they left the night before.

In the mean time, I call the brother and tell him and his mother what happened. He, his sister and their mother calls the agent handling the case of his brother and tells her that their has been a false report that was used to victimize another person as a form of retaliation. He pretty much has to threaten the lady to contact the DCF agency in my town, which she finally does.

So, pretty open and shut right, nope. I ask our agent if she has been in contact with the (now network) of agents investigation false reports on everyone that has ever let these people stay with them and she tells me that she cannot confirm or deny it due to the fact that she has to protect the anonymity of the reporter but that our case was in active investigation, because they found items of concern in our house (If they provided half the case work diligence that they do to protect the anonymity of a random caller, we would have never been in this mess).

The items of concern was a pot pipe in the room that the family stayed in. I did not allow drugs to be used in my house and the brother clearly described the pot pipe to them as he had seen his brother pipe before, so there was no doubt that this pipe belonged to a known drug addict that lived in that room. Still no go, so now we are being investigated not for child abuse, as the original allegation claimed, but drug abuse, so they go through my medicine cabinet and catalog every pill bottle I have.

Then the drug test come back, and I come back positive for a controlled substance, Alazopram, I have had panic attacks since I was about 10 years old and have been under a doctors care for that long. They know this but feign like they don't.

They then decide to contact my doctor and volunteer the information that I am being investigated for drug abuse and then show up on my door to inform me that I will have to attend mandatory drug classes and enter a rehab facility or they will bring it before the judge. My lawyer called their bluff because they knew I had a prescription for the medication because they interviewed my doctor. Yet when they came to my house they acted like they must have missed the pill bottle with my name on it and asked to see it again. They looked at it for all of .2 seconds and then said well since you have a prescription it is probably best that we go ahead and close the case.

DCF gets brownie points if they can get you entered into some social program if they cannot build a case to get a conviction. They will do everything in their power to do so.

In my case they had a blatant case of their system being used to victimize someone else and instead of upholding justice they saw an opportunity to score a win due to poor circumstances (me not finding a pipe in the closet when we cleaned the room). They would have railroaded me if they could have with no concern as to right and wrong. I feel so bad for those who do not have the resources to retain a lawyer. Nevertheless like the article states the stain remains even after the case is closed. I always wonder if my doctor secretly thinks that I am a drug addict now. I was in a state of fear that my medicine for panic attacks would not be available to me due to the political risk of having me as a patient.

I feared having my children taken away and believe that they had pushed me past the point of breaking. If they had taken my children I believe at that point I could have hurt myself or others. To be innocent with the truth so obvious and to have people ignore it makes you feel victimized and it makes you want to victimize the ones that are doing it to you. I think that is probably the one time in life that someone or some thing had driven me to the edge of sanity. I love my children more than anything in my life and I started to have crazy thought of having to protect my children at all costs. It was insane and they had no regard for the human wreckage they where leaving in their wake.

Fortunately, I held it together, my lawyer, just like the one in the article, constantly reminded me that if I displayed aggression they would use it against me. If I snapped and went postal they would use it against my wife and I would no longer be here to help my wife and children navigate that mess. And if I just killed myself that I would be a coward that left my wife and kids to fend for themselves. It is hard for a man because he has a natural instinct to protect his family and to have to quell that instinct in times of extreme stress when people are truly trying to attack your family is difficult to say the least.

In the end the case was closed, DCF thought they where going to get out quick and quite when they where rebuffed with my prescription, but my lawyer had one last volley with them, in which he insisted that it be noted on our file that the report be marked as a false report. They tried to resist but he threatened civil action against the agency and they relented. I requested the file and on the last line it states subjects request that this be labeled a false report. To the very end they cannot see the victimization that they did.

Anyway, like the article said it fades into a bad memory but leaves you always looking over your shoulder. The part that I am most bitter about is that I asked the agent as she was leaving, are you guys going to bring charges against them for filing all of these false reports. To which she said well the agency dose not really do that, with the case load we don't have time to chase false reports.

The man that we tried to help ended up overdosing 2 months later. The children where never taken from them because they complied with the mandated social programs that DCF required them to do so that DCF could get their check mark. They sent him to a welfare doctor that gave him methadone and klonopin (a stronger relative of the medicine that I take, which they had no issue with their doctor prescribing to a known drug addict), he took too much of both one night and died. His 8yr old and 5y old daughter found him the next day.

EDIT: forgot to mention, wife was pregnant and had baby during the investigation to which they showed up at the hospital to decide whether we could take our new born child home or not.

wow USA is really insane! I must earn tons of money and go to a better place like Scandinavian countries.

day by day my doubt in power of USA is increasing, it seems to be headed on path of Britain or worse Japan

It's really common wrong-headed idea, and I suspect at its heart it's a fundamental flaw of democracy.

The idea is that if A does bad thing B, all you have to do is pass a law against doing B, and A will stop doing B.

But that's not how it works in practice. Instead, you introduce this third character C, who goes out looking for As who might be doing Bs, and potentially does a lot of damage in that search.

That damage isn't taken into consideration by the people who simply want As to stop doing B. But people, as a collective electorate, are like a simple-minded 6-year-old, who are promised something by their parents, and they clap their hands in glee, unable to imagine the downsides.

The position of the laws being used in this way should be terrifying to you, however. This was waiting in line at an ice cream station, it's been made into a highway at rush hour with automated turrets and trigger-happy assault-rifle-wielding idiots patrolling.