This account of six families whose children were wrongly seized by child protection services vividly illustrates the constitutional balancing act where medicine, family interests, and child safety can clash.
They Took the Kids Last Night shows a rarely exposed side of America’s contemporary struggle to address child abuse, telling the stories of loving families who were almost destroyed by false allegations-readily accepted by caseworkers, doctors, the media, and, too often, the courts.
Each of the six wrongly accused families profiled in this book faced an epic and life-changing battle when child protection caseworkers came to their homes to take their kids. In each case, a child had an injury whose cause was unknown; it could have been due to an accident, a medical condition, or abuse. Each family ultimately exonerated itself and restored its family life, but still bears scars from the experience that will never disappear. The book tells why and how the child protection system failed these families. It also examines the larger flaws in our country’s child protection safety net that is supposed to sort out the innocent from the guilty in order to protect children.
Illustrates how the mantra best interests of the child masks errors, assumptions, and stereotypes that hide the real harm child protection policies are doing to children and families
Reveals how families are wrongly separated when overworked and underskilled caseworkers jump to conclusions of guilt, ignoring evidence of innocence
Focuses on the child protection system from the moment of intervention-starting with the child abuse hotline call that targets a specific child as a victim and his or her parents as suspects
Highlights the many decision points, attitudes, policies, and practices that operate to make even innocent parents vulnerable to having their children taken from them
Explains why basic due process principles ordered by federal and state courts would go a long way to help families, but cautions that just results depend on effective family defense counsel
