They Took the Kids Last Night

How the Child Protection System Puts Families at Risk

Diane L. Redleaf

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781440866289
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798216155515
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Family Law
• Index: Law

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• ONE Today the Brady Bunch Kids Could Be Taken Too
• TWO A “Multidisciplinary Pediatric Consortium” Means Doctors Help Police and Caseworkers to Take the Kids
• THREE The Investigation Begins in Earnest with “Hurry Up and Wait”
• FOUR It’s Fine to Take the Kids, Unless the State Is Lying
• FIVE A Night to Remember
• SIX Planning for a Court Date to Keep the Kids
• SEVEN “Without Prejudice” Means You Lose the Kids for Now
• EIGHT Bringing on the Witnesses
• NINE The State’s Star Witness and Someone the Investigation Missed
• TEN The Baby’s at Risk If Breastfed in Private
• ELEVEN Attacking the Doctor Who Knows Something About Fractures
• TWELVE To the Finish Line
• THIRTEEN Attempts at Recourse and the End of the Investigation
• FOURTEEN Partial Answers and Partial Remedies
• FIFTEEN A “Constellation of Injuries” Does Not Equal Child Abuse
• SIXTEEN We Believe the Children, Except When They Say the Baby Wasn’t Abused
• SEVENTEEN A Statistical Likelihood Doesn’t Make Parents Guilty
• Epilogue: What Needs to Be Done
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author