Protecting children from violence

Remember the case of the North Carolina mother who allegedly pimped out her little daughter for pedophiles to molest? (If not, see my post dated 11/18/09.) Well, we’re hearing now that child protective services (CPS) had investigated this mother in the past but didn’t pick up on how much danger her little girl really was in. Now I’m generally a supporter of law-enforcement personnel, and I don’t know yet whether CPS dropped the ball in North Carolina as they apparently did in Idaho in the Robert Manwill case (see my post dated 8/19/09), but when the ball does get dropped, the excuse that we always seem to get is lack of funding. OK, if you’re a state/local lawmaker, and you tell me your community doesn’t have enough money to protect children from violence, I shouldn’t be able to find a public library, or zoo, or swimming pool, or a thousand other less-important things being funded by your community, but I’ll bet I could, and if so, you need to get your priorities straight. If you’re not protecting children from violence, nothing else you’re doing well really impresses me. (And by the way, screwups occur in both directions — not enough time spent on some cases and too much time spent on others. For example, I’ve been a treating expert in a case in which totally-innocent parents were separated from their children for months while CPS “investigated” an allegation that a middle-school student could’ve figured out was false. In that case, there was no rush to get it figured out because the parents were totally cooperative and compliant, but it could’ve and should’ve been handled in under a week. Every credible abuse allegation should be looked into, but rather than spending weeks and months on the easy cases, we need CPS to get the easy ones figured out quickly and then really be out there “in the trenches” staying on top of the tough cases, like this North Carolina case. If that requires more funding, fine — protecting children from violence belongs up at the top of government’s priorities list, so something else will have to wait.)

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