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

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

#181

Post by jbooth »

jacquesm wrote: post #180
jbooth wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the plural of anecdote is not data. Maybe we should reconsider the laws, rather than the organization. If we didn't have a different standard of "guilty until proven innocent" that immediately kicks in when someone's accused of child abuse, the organization might be much more effective. Or less effective. I don't know. Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.

> Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though. The plural of anecdote may not be data, but if there is no data to support something and plenty to support the opposite you're allowed to draw your own conclusions. Not everybody approaches each and every issue in life as though it were a scientific experiment, and when your relationship with your kid(s) is at stake you're allowed to make some shortcuts that a…

No data to support something?

How many times has social services taken kids away from parents who were actually bad? 100s of times a day? How many lives and/or psyches have they saved this week?

The problem is indeed the politics, because if you're looking for a campaign issue, you can just propose some ridiculous draconian system like "we'll take away kids immediately upon accusation". If your opponent predictably objects that that's unreasonable, he's SOFT ON CHILD ABUSERS. Bonus points if you accuse him of coddling criminals and put up posters with a scary looking black guy on it.

These social service workers have a tough job and if they don't follow policy to the letter, they'll get canned. They've also, as said upthread, probably dealt with a fair number of convincing liars and gone home from work knowing that those liars' kids are still being abused. Obviously the cases cited are out of control and obviously we have problems regarding sex offender laws in this country -- you can be haunted for years by taking a leak in public. But the majority of social workers are getting crap pay for a thankless job that at the end of the day, leads to less child abuse. Let's just remember that.

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

#182

Post by chc »

Dove wrote: post #144

It makes a mockery of the life, liberty and property clause that family can be threatened so lightly. In my opinion, it is a fundamental right to raise your children according to your standards. Parents should be in control of the risks, ideas, and experiences their children are exposed to. Minority views on what is appropriate should be protected as rigorously as minority political or religious views. I would like t…

First of all, there's no such thing as the "life, liberty and property clause" in American law.

Second, what if my standards for raising children are similar to Josef Fritzl's? Is that a fundamental right? You'd probably say no, but now the black-and-white rule is turning gray, and we're heading back toward the maddening uncertainty that our society has developed.

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

#183

Post by derefr »

cromulent wrote: post #179

The spectrum of human sexuality that is accepted by society is narrower than the human biological spectrum of sexuality. Rightfully, we reject behaviour that can damage children. Wrongfully, many modern societies (until recently) fiercely rejected homosexuality, with often tragic results. The current methods of dealing with pedophilia - by suspecting everyone, every man in a park taking photos of his children - are a…

What can we really do to "help" pedophiles, though? Chemically castrate them, like we did to homosexuals (e.g. Alan Turing)? Teach them how to go through life having desires but not acting on them (which is what 99% of them already do successfully)?

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

#184

Post by hga »

blueberry wrote: post #52
kls wrote: post #13

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 the…

I wonder what is with those brownie points? Do they transform into big buck$?

If they take the children away, yes, they get a "bounty" you might say for each child removed from a family. This is from that 1974 law mentioned in the article.

Once you understand the incentive system it all starts to make sense.

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

#185

Post by klipt »

kls wrote: post #13

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 the…

> we don't have time to chase false reports

I wonder whether they'd start chasing false reports if somebody made a list of every DCF employee, their close friends and family, and called DCF on every single one of them.

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

#186

Post by jvdh »

djacobs wrote: post #95
jvdh wrote: post #54

On the one hand I completely sympathize with the author. As a parent myself I would not wish this upon anyone. On the other hand, the author is a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt. If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If they were treated any othe…

> If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If that's true, then we have a huge problem. Basically I'm hearing this in that comment: If someone is innocent, they are innocent until proved guilty. If someone is guilty, they are guilty until proved innocent. The problem with that idea is supreme…

I completely agree with you. The problem is that 90% of the general public does not.

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

#187

Post by jvdh »

Tichy wrote: post #59
jvdh wrote: post #54

On the one hand I completely sympathize with the author. As a parent myself I would not wish this upon anyone. On the other hand, the author is a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt. If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If they were treated any othe…

"a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt." And I am a software developer, exactly the kind of people who cause computer viri, identity theft, spams and scams?

Your job as a software developer is to prevent viri, identity theft, spam and scams.

Journalists are looking for scandals, stories that score lots of eyeballs.

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

#188

Post by hga »

cagey wrote: post #169
slantyyz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neighbors can be the worst people. You think you bought your dream house, and someone moves in next door who is a total nightmare and makes you feel completely trapped and miserable.

And if they're there only because of "Section 8" funding you get to revel in the knowledge that it's your tax dollars "at work" subsidizing the mayhem next door! [BTDT] Hey, another bureaucracy at work!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1525587

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

#189

Post by cromulent »

derefr wrote: post #183
cromulent wrote: post #179

The spectrum of human sexuality that is accepted by society is narrower than the human biological spectrum of sexuality. Rightfully, we reject behaviour that can damage children. Wrongfully, many modern societies (until recently) fiercely rejected homosexuality, with often tragic results. The current methods of dealing with pedophilia - by suspecting everyone, every man in a park taking photos of his children - are a…

What can we really do to "help" pedophiles, though? Chemically castrate them, like we did to homosexuals (e.g. Alan Turing)? Teach them how to go through life having desires but not acting on them (which is what 99% of them already do successfully)?

I don't know, but I think we need to accept that they do exist, now and in the future, and find a way to deal with it.

This is not the way.

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

#190

Post by jacquesm »

jbooth wrote: post #181
jacquesm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though. The plural of anecdote may not be data, but if there is no data to support something and plenty to support the opposite you're allowed to draw your own conclusions. Not everybody approaches each and every issue in life as though it were a scientific experiment, and when your relationship with your kid(s) is at stake you're allowed to make some shortcuts that a…

No data to support something? How many times has social services taken kids away from parents who were actually bad? 100s of times a day? How many lives and/or psyches have they saved this week? The problem is indeed the politics, because if you're looking for a campaign issue, you can just propose some ridiculous draconian system like "we'll take away kids immediately upon accusation". If your opponent predictably o…

My 'anecdotes' are unfortunately all I've got, there are most likely instances where kids were taken away from parents that were 'actually bad', but I don't actually know of any of these.

I do know of one overlooked case but needless to say the child protection services are not interested in that one because daddy happens to be a fairly influential person in that particular community. But even in that case I'd wager the children are better of with their real parents than they would be in the hands of this 'service', which more often than not tosses children from the frying pan in to the fire.

Depending on where you're from it may be that the CPA or whatever it is called locally is doing a fantastic job, but so far I haven't seen any evidence of that and plenty of evidence of wrongdoing, powerplay, pettiness, revenge, allowing themselves to be used as a weapon between adults, messing up children's lives, messing up parents lives and in general doing a shitty job of it.

Politics doesn't even enter in to it, that's just the enabling element, the people that make up these institutions are a very large part of the problem, if they did their job right within the law as it is laid down at the moment the bigger part of the problem would go away.

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