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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

#201

Post by philwelch »

gscott wrote: post #102
jacquesm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good part of that is the fundamentalist Christian ('reborn') element in the United States which commands a fair portion of the vote.

I would suggest these organizations are more liberal thinkers where the child is better off under Government supervision. The Bible is pretty clear that the parent should raise the child. The Bible is really against "Caesar" taking a big part of your life for example 'spare the rod, spoil the child'.

I suspect by "liberal" you mean "leftist", though the terms have become conflated in American parlance.

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

#202

Post by sp332 »

jdminhbg wrote: post #149
steveklabnik wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like a terrible troll, but when an entire religious group gets up and sails across an ocean because everyone back home won't stop telling them that they're crazy... what else would you expect?

This is just a sort of ahistorical folk wisdom explanation. An entire religious group sailed across the ocean because everyone back home told them they were crazy and founded Pennsylvania -- is the US noted for its fanatic devotion to pacifism?

Well, not after the Calvinists burned them at the stake.

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

#203

Post by pstuart »

ErrantX wrote: post #69

Besharov also said that the current law should be amended to grant immunity to those who in good faith deem a situation not to be child abuse or pornography. That way, those who report cases of abuse of questionable merit, simply to err on the side of mandatory reporting laws, might feel less pressure to do so. In our case, maybe the responding officer, who initially commented that he didn't find the pictures pornogr…

I think that such a call should be relatively straightforward. A picture of a naked child is not pornography unless there is explicit sexual context, i.e., touching of genitals, etc. Otherwise, a naked child in a bathtub, pool or such activity is the picture of innocence itself.

If there was doubt, bring it before a jury of one's peers as opposed to some back-room morality police.

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

#204

Post by akeefer »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #93

Welcome to Child Protective Services, where folks with sociology degrees, sometimes poor cognitivie abilities, and questionable work ethics who want to be on a mission to save the world are given powers that would make the local police chief blush. I hated to write that. Snarky it was. Of course most of the cases these folks work are really sad -- I have family that work there. But it's a blunt instrument, and politi…

Sigh . . .

I get that CPS doesn't always do the best job, and plenty of the people that work there are on a power trip and got into social work because they like telling other people what to do. The world would certainly be a better place if they were able to do their job better and if some of their officers were more courteous.

But as you probably know, working for CPS is an incredibly difficult job. It's very demanding on your time, it's immensely stressful emotionally, everyone hates you, and it can put you in physical danger (you often have to be accompanied by a police officer). Unsurprisingly, in many places they have trouble finding enough qualified applications to fill the necessary positions. I know that I sure as hell wouldn't want to do that job.

I guess I just get tired of the vitriol directed their direction as if the world would be a better place if CPS wasn't around, or as if they intentionally make life hard on people just because, or as if they're somehow more lenient on poor people. Your additional comment there is, in my experience, pretty wildly off-base: my wife is a social worker who works with plenty of poor clients who have had children taken away and never managed to get them back because they're unable to support them financially or have ongoing drug or alcohol problems. The kids are put in group or foster homes basically permanently, not sent back to their parents. And it's not like the "poor crackheads," as you so respectfully put it, don't care: they care just as much as anyone else does.

What I'd like to see is some more level-headed analysis of what the "false positive" or "false negative" rates are. For every family innocently harrassed, how many families are quickly cleared of any wrongdoing and how many children are removed from abusive situations? It makes a big difference if 60% of the claims CPS investigates result in putting an innocent family through hell or if 1% of the investigations do.

Again . . . would the world be better if CPS was able to do a better job? Sure. Would the world be a better place if we reverted back to treating children like property with no rights and allowing parents complete free rein over their children? No.

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

#205

Post by ugh »

philwelch wrote: post #200
ugh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what did the other countries, that have less-strict laws, do? It’s not a very nice answer but I think they have less direct democracies and delegate many of the nitty-gritty details of the law to experts. That’s also why there is no death penalty in Europe.

"That’s also why there is no death penalty in Europe." Really? My theory was always this: Frontier cultures need death penalties because they don't have the resources to keep very many people imprisoned for very long. The same is true of nomadic cultures, which explains a lot of things in the Bible. (The Old Testament has a long list of crimes, all of which are punishable with stoning. Which is sensible for a nomadic…

Abolishment of the death penalty is very recent development (last executions: France 1977, UK 1964, Germany 1949 – arguably a special case) and public opinion is not fundamentally different between Europe and the US.

There is a interesting (but expensive) book about this topic [1], from the blurb: Movements to abolish the death penalty cannot be understood without a grasp of the dynamics of public opinion on capital punishment, which is driven not by rational consideration but by what cognitive psychologists call 'social intuitions,' deeply rooted attitudes which are resistant to change. European death-penalty abolitionists quickly realized the futility of trying to change public opinion on a mass scale, and instead devised strategies to accomplish abolition despite lingering public support for the death penalty. Pointing to the importance of political structures that allowed European abolitionists to bypass public opinion, this study assesses the prospects of the 'European model' of abolition in global perspective.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0230231985?tag=gerjoy-21&camp...;

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

#206

Post by flostre »

ErrantX wrote: post #69

Besharov also said that the current law should be amended to grant immunity to those who in good faith deem a situation not to be child abuse or pornography. That way, those who report cases of abuse of questionable merit, simply to err on the side of mandatory reporting laws, might feel less pressure to do so. In our case, maybe the responding officer, who initially commented that he didn't find the pictures pornogr…

    If it later turns out you just let a child pornographer go free you will be
    proverbially screwed; both by the LE services and the media.
Not to mention your conscience.

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

#207

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jbooth wrote: post #174
kls wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increased budget next year.

These departments in every state have been getting slashed for the last 10 years, actually.

So not an increased budget but instead more statistics in the fight to retain their current headcount?

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

#208

Post by jbooth »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #207
jbooth wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These departments in every state have been getting slashed for the last 10 years, actually.

So not an increased budget but instead more statistics in the fight to retain their current headcount?

Now you're talking.

Maybe if these guys were funded to a reasonable, lean level (as opposed to complete funding starvation), we'd get better behavior. If you compare their funding level compared to, say, drug enforcement, it's clear that we're a little misbalanced. "Catching the crooks" always sells better than "keeping kids out of juvie so they don't become crooks", no matter which one is more cost-effective.

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

#209

Post by eru »

gscott wrote: post #100
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 have had something similar, someone called "CPS" (Child Protective Services) who came over and told us that our 1 month old child might crawl into my computer cables.. The challenge is that a 1 month old doesn't crawl or do much really. We lived in a studio apartment, turned out her real desire was for us to move. That appeased the social worker for some reason, this was 14 years ago luckily my father was around an…

By the way, if you, say, gave birth at home, how do the authorities come to know about your children? Do you have to register them somewhere?

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

#210

Post by eru »

megablast wrote: post #8

Everyone should read Franz Kafka's The Trial. This story and The Trial depict the helplessness anyone can feel with our legal system, or any big bureaucracy.

Yes. Although The Trial can also be read as a piece on his engagement. But Kafka was quite familiar with bureaucracy -- he worked for one.
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