This is for all you CPS apologists out there:
Link
For those without the time, or inclination to follow the link, I will rehash the story. A North Carolina family has spent the last year fighting authorities over a picture the wife took of her husband holding up their year old son and kissing him on the belly button. The photo developer took the picture, saw the worst, and notified police, who also saw the worst. The children (the baby and his half sister) were taken away and the family spent months trying to regain custody.
There are those who would be inclined to think this was an isolated incident. I once was one of those. But after extensive study on the subject, I have email bins and file folders full of case history after case history of examples such as this. In all of these cases, families have been irreperably harmed, with an intense distrust of the "system" because of what has been done. And, worst of all, the time and money spent by authorities on spurious claims such as this could have been better spent on identifying and prosecuting REAL abusers.
Make no mistake about it; real abusers are out there. And yes, they deserve to be rooted out and prosecuted. But CPS overreach is not identifying more of these abusers; rather, the increasing oversight of mostly innocent families has left state agencies without the time or resources necessary to find these abusers. One need look no further than the state of Illinois, who saw an INCREASE in child abuse deaths following an increase in state funding for CPS (source: the National Center for Child Protection reform, www.nccpr.org ).
I have mentioned this statistic before, but it bears repeating: Of all of the CPS child removal cases, only 3 percent will ever result in criminal charges being levelled against the parents/guardians. Even when you consider the CPS cases involving emergencies (sudden incarceration/death of the parent/guardian, etc), that still leaves a staggering number of parents wrongfully accused, and their constitutional rights violated, when you consider over 500,000 children in the foster care system nationwide.
In a nation built upon the precepts of liberty, we must seriously begin taking a hard look at those entrusted to protect our liberties. When those charged with the enforcement of law themselves fail to respect the rule of law, only anarchy can result.