Bodycam video reveals the appalling behavior of Florida family police

Street art on a bridge in Pensacola, Florida. (Image from Freekenlee.com)

I don’t know if the underlying decision to remove the child in this case was right, though there is strong cause to doubt it. I do know that everything else the Florida Department of Children and Families did was wrong – and probably far more common than the agency will ever admit. 

Kenlee Zuraff was five years old when she was taken from her mother, Joy, on March 6, 2024. She reportedly was returned in June of this year, after the Florida Department of Children and Families failed in an attempt to take the child from her mother forever. 

I saw the video embedded below when it first was posted publicly last January. I did not write about it at the time because, though the behavior of caseworkers for DCF was atrocious, I could find no objective source of information about the underlying facts of the case. I hoped that a mainstream news outlet would dig into the story. That didn’t happen. 

But in the months since, some state legislators have taken an interest – one of them, State Sen. Jason Pizzo, is even defending the mother in court, pro-bono. That has prompted some good ideas for legislation and some news coverage, though still not enough to get at the underlying facts of the case. 

As you’ll see on the website created by the family’s supporters, the case has gotten a lot of attention on various far-right sites. For someone like me, who comes from what I like to call the “Family Values Left,” that can be a problem. What does one do when the only national news story about the case comes from One America News? (In fact, in this case, their story met all normal journalistic standards.) But I’ll bet that’s made other reporters hesitant. Of course, this may only illustrate a point I’ve made often before: Nothing will get some of my fellow liberals to renounce everything they claim to believe in about due process and civil liberties more quickly than whispering the words “child abuse” in their ears. 

There is analogous hypocrisy among some on the right. This issue creates divisions within both Left and Right, but where some of us have common ground, we’ve come together in a group called Untied Family Advocates. And some of the legislative proposals on the FreeKenlee.com website are similar to some of NCCPR’s own recommendations. 

One thing I do know: After more than two years in foster care, Kenlee finally was returned to her mother. I believe that, had there been no video, that wouldn’t have happened. I believe that, had there been no video, the child’s right to live with her mother would have been taken away forever. 

What we know about the case 

Kenlee has Cystic Fibrosis. According to her mother, Joy, a doctor prescribed a medication that comes with a “black box warning” from the Food and Drug Administration. According to the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, “Black box warnings are added only when substantial clinical data shows the drug can cause severe harm, hospitalization, or death.” Kenlee had had a bad reaction to a similar drug. So Joy said she wanted a second opinion. That, she says, prompted the doctor, a mandated reporter, to call DCF. 

The most detailed account of these underlying events comes from a letter that an adult with Cystic Fibrosis wrote to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, seeking their involvement. (I don’t know if they ever replied.) The letter also describes how often the mere fact that a child has CF puts a family on the family police radar. So add such families to the long list of people who are inherently more vulnerable to having the family police in their lives because of a disability. 

There are elements in the video which I think support this account. On the other hand, Joy’s brother and mother in South Dakota reportedly have defended DCF’s decision. 

What we know for sure 

Kenlee was torn from her mother and sister and placed in a stranger-care home in Jacksonville – six hours away. The distance, of course, made visiting extremely difficult, compounding the trauma of removal. 

When Joy dared to speak out, a judge imposed a gag order. Although court hearings themselves are supposed to be public in Florida, termination of parental rights hearings are an exception. So no reporters could see what was going on, and Joy herself couldn’t tell anyone. That’s just the way family police agencies like it. 

But most damning of all is this video, showing what happened when DCF and Sheriff’s deputies came to take Kenlee. It runs nearly 45 minutes, and it’s hard to watch, so let me call attention to some key moments: 

● The behavior of the DCF workers starting just before five minutes in.

 

● The look on one DCF worker’s face at 11:54 in.

 

● Then watch as the DCF workers rely on the same mother who allegedly is mis-medicating her daughter to explain to them what medications the child is taking and how they should be administered.

 

● See also the DCF employees’ behavior toward Kenlee’s older sister toward the very end of the video.

 

Throughout, they refer to the mother only as “mama,” denying her even the dignity of being called by her own name.

 

As I said, this all took place on March 6, 2024.  Only after the video became public did DCF issue a statement justifying the removal, but adding that 

“the conduct displayed by the Department employees in the video was inappropriate. It failed to demonstrate the level of professionalism and compassion expected in such circumstances, and the Department is addressing this.”  

According to one news account, shortly after the video became public, one of the DCF workers was fired.

 

But while the video only became public in January 2026, surely DCF should have had it for nearly two years. So why did DCF wait until the video became public to address the “inappropriate” behavior? (Yeah, that’s a rhetorical question.) If a worker was fired, was it for the behavior or for forgetting she was on camera?

 

How common is such behavior when no one is recording it? I’m sure most DCF workers don’t behave this way. There are stories from all over the country, equally well-documented, of caseworkers going above and beyond to help keep families together. But this was no aberration either.

 

A grand jury in the same region where this case took place found 12 instances in which DCF workers or subcontractors doing case management were accused by law enforcement of falsifying records. And, of course, there’s no reason to believe DCF workers are better behaved than their private “lead agency” counterparts in Tampa, whose behavior was just exposed by the Tampa Bay Times.

 

Solutions

 

As I noted, the group supporting Kenlee has some good ideas. For starters: require DCF workers to wear body cameras (to which I would add the equivalent of an “exclusionary rule”: if they forget to turn the camera on, or the cameras malfunction, then no information obtained during the unrecorded interviews/inspections could be used in court or in DCF records.)

 

For decades, NCCPR has advocated requiring all interviews to be recorded – with a similar
exclusionary rule. The recommendation goes back so far that originally we spoke of how easy it would be to do this on microcassette tape recorders. Now that bodycams are available, should we take that leap? There are concerns this might intimidate families. But Kenlee’s case illustrates how sometimes recording interviews alone would not be enough. I don’t think DCF ever would have taken action concerning its caseworkers in this case, and chances are, Kenlee still would be in foster care, if not for that bodycam video.

 

They also recommend, as do we, explicitly giving families the right to make recordings of their own, and informing families that they have that right.

 

Kenlee’s supporters also put a lot of emphasis on providing high-quality legal representation for families, something we have long advocated and consider one of the most important ways to curb needless removal of children and other family police abuses.

 

One of the lawmakers supporting Kenlee and her mother, State Sen Don Gaetz, has another excellent idea. As the Tampa Bay Times reports: 

One of Gaetz’s proposed changes would be to have the department secretary, who is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Florida Senate, review all cases where there is a proposed termination of parental rights. 

In other words, Ms. or Mr. Secretary of DCF: If your agency is going to impose child welfare’s equivalent of the death penalty, you must personally sign off on the execution request. 

Also from the story: 

[Gaetz] also said parents must have due process, and should be able to dispute inaccurate information from the agency without fear of being retaliated against. Gaetz also said the department should not unnecessarily move children hundreds of miles from home. 

Concerning the retaliation issue, the story mentions no specifics. 

But it’s good to see lawmakers begin to make efforts to curb family policing.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 1, 2026

● The big news this week includes publication of an outstanding new book. In Making Families, Breaking Families, child welfare’s foremost academic historian, Dr. Mical Raz, brings a scholar’s perspective to the story of the fearmongering and smears that ultimately led Congress to pass the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act. Although the print edition won’t be out until later this month, the electronic edition is available now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. 

I’m proud that NCCPR and the work of several NCCPR Board Members are cited in discussing the efforts to fight back and set the record straight. The lessons from that time are urgent; there is much to be learned. And while it’s not pleasant to be reminded of how bad things got, it’s encouraging to see how far we’ve come. 

● Reporters for the Tampa Bay Times spent more than a year digging into “hidden foster care” in Florida. Even if you think you know what that term means, and even why it’s so harmful, I guarantee you’ll still be shocked by some of what you’ll read. It is the best – and most horrifying  -- story I’ve seen anywhere in the country on the topic. 

● The Baltimore Banner has a column, and Investigate West has a story that have something in common: Each illustrates the confusion of poverty with neglect. I have a blog post about it with links to both stories. 

● And while both Maryland and Oregon are throwing away money on makeshift placements and/or institutions, The Imprint reports that California is moving in a better direction: bolstering “wraparound” services. The story does an excellent job of answering a question I get all the time: Yes, but what is wraparound anyway? 

● You’d think it’s kind of obvious, but, The Imprint reports, the federal government has sent out guidance to the states reminding them that, when an adoption fails, they are not supposed to keep paying subsidies to adoptive parents who aren’t adoptive parents anymore. And states can require paperwork from those parents documenting that they are, in fact, still the adoptive parents.

In this week’s reminder that the horror stories go in all directions: 

● From The Marshall Project: 

The chief executive of one of Ohio’s largest residential treatment centers for youth is accused of driving nearly three hours to meet someone for sex whom he believed was a 14-year-old girl. Instead, he met a police officer, according to police and court documents.

Confusing poverty with neglect, from coast to coast

Two stories in the news last week aptly illustrate that, no matter how deep in denial the child welfare establishment may be about it, they do indeed regularly confuse poverty with neglect. 

From Oregon … 

For decades, Oregon has torn apart families at a rate well above the national average. Things have improved, but as of 2025, it was still about 34% above that average when rates of family poverty are factored in. But that 34% figure is just a statewide average. Now, Investigate West reports that 

Since at least 2020, rural counties have consistently accounted for the highest rates of foster care involvement in Oregon, with some southeastern communities seeing rates three times higher than Multnomah County, the state’s most populous county. 

But that’s not because those rural counties are cesspools of depravity with triple the rate of child abuse. It’s for the obvious reason: Fewer services and more difficulty getting to them. From the story: 

KayCee Weeks … who oversees programs in rural Crook County, said many families she works with came to the attention of child welfare caseworkers because of parenting issues related to economic hardship. 

Some parents repeatedly missed their child’s health care appointments, because the provider was an hour away and they could not afford the cost of gas or repairs to a rundown vehicle, Weeks said. Others said they struggled to keep up with cleaning and maintaining their home, on top of everything else that is on their plate. 

Some of the responses in the story are disappointingly sanguine. They boil down to: We can’t do anything unless the state spends more. That’s not true. It would be nice if the state would spend more, but there’s no need to sit around waiting for that. While the data are old, Oregon probably already spends at a rate more than 80% above the national average, again, when rates of child poverty are factored in. 

So Oregon could accomplish a lot by shifting some of the money it wastes playing whack-a-mole with the state’s most vulnerable children. 

One other thing the story reveals, though it’s never mentioned: Oregon is engaging in a massive violation of federal law. That law requires that states make “reasonable efforts” to prevent children from being consigned to the chaos of foster care. 

Congress never defined that term. But common sense suggests that: “We don’t have anything except foster care so we’re throwing your kids into foster care” does not qualify. 

Unfortunately, in this respect, Oregon is not unusual. Across the country, ignoring “reasonable efforts” is far more the rule than the exception. 

… to Maryland 

In The Baltimore Banner, columnist Leslie Gray Streeter writes with rare insight and compassion about Kahliyah Gooding, a poor mother who was arrested after she left her children home alone. She quotes from the police report: 

“She leaves her children at home because daycare is too expensive and she has to work.” 

Yes, the usual crowd of affluent, censorious “professionals” can gleefully wag their fingers and say it wasn’t poverty “alone” because the house also was filthy. (Why, oh why didn’t she just hire a maid? Oh, wait…) 

Streeter knows better. So does Prof. Shanta Trivedi, associate professor of law and faculty director of the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Family, Children and the Courts at the University of Baltimore. From the column: 

“… Most moms don’t want to leave their kids alone. I don’t think she left them because she thought it was a good idea,” Trivedi said. “She did what she had to do to put food in their mouths.” 

It’s possible Gooding’s children are now in foster care, though we don’t know. “The state will pay for other people to care for your children, but the same money could be used for daycare so that they could stay with their mom,” Trivedi said. “We put a lot toward foster care and adoption but very little on prevention.” … 

So why don’t parents in need avail themselves of the system? “Calling social services guarantees some sort of intervention, and you really run the risk of losing your kids anyway,” Trivedi said. 

This seems like a good place for a reminder that Maryland is planning to spend more than $1 billion over the next five years, just to buy 637 institutional beds to warehouse children.

Graphic by ChatGPT

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 25, 2026

● Maine’s highest court has ruled that no, the state family police agency can’t keep a family apart forever just because mom can’t afford housing. But the agency sure did try – and they may yet succeed. As the Maine Monitor put it in their excellent story about the case: 

The ruling highlights the ongoing debate in Augusta about whether Maine’s child welfare system too often conflates lack of financial resources with abuse or neglect, as well as Maine’s recent history of taking children into foster care at higher rates than other states. It also puts into stark relief the consequences of Maine’s affordable housing crisis. 

And if you compare what Maine authorities did here to the remarkable restraint shown by their Ohio counterparts in a case with some striking similarities, it highlights something else, too.  I have a blog post about it.  

● A family police agency chasing a mother all the way to another state and harassing her also was the issue in a major appellate court decision in New York.  As The New York Times reports, the court said New York City’s family police agency is not allowed to do that – something one could kind of see coming given how the oral argument went. 

● Workers in Missouri were desperate to find a placement for Korbin Papadopoulous, a 17-year-old with diabetes and autism. They were desperate because a foster-care panic has sent the number of children torn from their homes skyrocketing – creating an artificial “shortage” of foster homes. 

So they wound up placing the youth in a home that wasn’t licensed to take in nonrelatives and wasn’t equipped to meet his medical needs. The foster parents did their best – and at least twice asked the state family police agency, the Children’s Division, to take the youth back. By the time they finally agreed, it was too late. As the Missouri Independent reports, the boy died of diabetic ketoacidosis. 

The head of the Children’s Division, Sara Smith, responded exactly as anyone familiar with her track record would expect: with a flurry of CYA memos, effectively attempting to shift blame to frontline workers. But, with her foster-care panic and her fanatical demands to take away more children, Smith herself bears more responsibility for this tragedy than any overwhelmed frontline worker. 

Oh, and if you’re thinking: Well, these things happen when abused children have to be removed, here’s the thing: This child was never abused. 

As the Independent story explains: 

Korbin first entered foster care in 2019. His father told The Independent he and Korbin’s mother approached Children’s Division for help after their son was diagnosed with diabetes and autism. They couldn’t afford the treatment their son’s doctors advised, Papadopoulos said, and the division indicated they could provide resources. 

[Korbin’s mother, Natisha Jett] said she and Papadopoulos went to the division because they “just wanted to get (him) the help he needed so he could have the life he deserves.” 

Korbin “didn’t need a family,” Papadopoulos said. “He already had a family.” 

Papadopoulos said Korbin had more than 15 placements in residential facilities and foster homes before his death. 

● In the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Dr. Mical Raz tells the story of Foster Care Youth United, the pioneering publication founded in 1993 that, at long last, let foster youth tell their own stories – unfiltered by the adults who built and maintained the system that enmeshed them. And yet, their voices were shut out when Congress debated a law that would profoundly worsen many of their lives, the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act. 

Dr. Raz writes about how the magazine’s founder Keith Hefner was shocked by  

…[t]he prevalence of sexual abuse endured by young girls while in foster care … He recalled observing that among the magazine’s writers, the vast majority of girls and many of the boys reported experiencing sexual abuse, often in group homes or foster families.35 In one heartbreaking essay, a young woman, who chose to remain anonymous, described how her social worker repeatedly coerced her into sexual relations. She recounted how, the first time he raped her, she “wanted to scream, but I also wanted to go on a weekend pass with my mother.” She knew her assailant was the one who could approve such a visit. 

● Never underestimate how low private foster agencies will sink to rub salt into the wounds of children abused on their watch. The Sacramento Bee reports that once again, in California, they’re trying to curb the right of those survivors to receive compensation for what was done to them. (It’s not just private foster care agencies; school districts also are fine with making things more miserable for those abused on their watch.) 

● So it’s a good thing even more survivors in San Diego are suing now, including residents of a shelter that was once notorious. As the San Diego Union Tribune reports: 

One of the new cases comes from former residents of the Polinsky Children’s Center, the temporary shelter in Kearny Mesa that treats children who are removed from their homes for their own protection. 

In this week’s (further) reminder that the horror stories go in all directions: 

● From KABC-TV, Los Angeles: 

A Riverside foster parent has been charged with multiple felonies after allegedly sexually assaulting at least three girls and one boy who were under his care over a period of nearly 20 years.

Maine fails to keep a family apart forever just because of poverty – but not for lack of trying

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Compare the trauma Maine family police inflicted on this family to the restraint shown by their counterparts in Ohio in a case with some remarkable similarities – and one huge difference. 

It turns out that even in Maine, you can’t reach thousands of miles into another state, tear a child from his mother, and then keep him away forever solely because the mother can’t afford an apartment in Maine. But not for lack of trying. It took years of court battles before Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled unanimously last week that a lower court was wrong when it did exactly that. And even now, the ruling doesn’t mean the child necessarily will get his mother back. 

The case illustrates one of the many points the take-the-child-and-run evangelists are desperate to avoid: Even when a child isn’t taken because of poverty “alone” and even when, as in this case, the court itself concludes the mother has gone “above and beyond” to do everything demanded of her, poverty alone often is the reason a family is not reunified. At least three separate studies have found that 30% of America’s foster children could be home right now if their families just had decent housing. This is the story of one such family. 

In this case, it appears, Maine’s family police agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, strove to keep this family apart forever for two reasons: It was more convenient for the agency, and they were “comparison shopping” and liked the foster parents better. 

As the Maine Monitor put it in an excellent story about the case: 

The ruling highlights the ongoing debate in Augusta about whether Maine’s child welfare system too often conflates lack of financial resources with abuse or neglect, as well as Maine’s recent history of taking children into foster care at higher rates than other states. It also puts into stark relief the consequences of Maine’s affordable housing crisis.

The facts 

The mother, referred to in the decision as “Karen,” has lived all her life in New Mexico. Her son has autism and “exceptionally high needs.” But the mother had a support network in her home state, and no one in either state ever accused her of not meeting those needs. She was living in an apartment in New Mexico she paid for in part with a Section 8 housing subsidy. 

But in 2021, Karen took her son with her to Maine to meet in person a man she’d met online. The man had prior convictions for domestic violence and assault, but there is nothing in the court decision to indicate that Karen knew that. But Karen apparently figured out she’d made a bad choice. Then she made another bad choice and a good choice at roughly the same time. She got drunk. But she didn’t stay with the man. On the contrary, she called 911 and asked for a ride home to New Mexico. 

One can imagine the glee with which the foster-care-at-all-costs crowd will greet those facts. Substance use! Risk of domestic violence! Certainly not poverty alone! But, of course, if Karen had money, she could simply have called a rideshare, gone to a hotel with her son, sobered up, and caught a plane home the next day. I wonder how many rich people do something similar after parties in Hollywood or the Hamptons? Since Karen didn’t have that option, she had to call police, who called DHHS, which promptly took away the child. 

Special note to the take-the-child-and-run finger-waggers

Before you get too censorious about Karen, be sure to compare her case to this other case, from Ohio, in the news lately. Here, too, Mom could be accused of making a bad choice in men, picking someone with a long list of “allegedlies” in his past – all of which he denies. But she married him, had a child with him, and, if her allegations are correct, (and again, he denies them), he committed domestic violence against her – in front of their two-year-old child. 

Family police agencies routinely investigate such mothers and often take the children, for “failure to protect” because they “allowed” their children to “witness domestic violence.” If the allegations are true, one certainly could make a case that, with hindsight, this mother’s decisions were as bad as Karen’s. Yet in this case, it seems, authorities have shown commendable restraint. No news account mentions this young child spending so much as a day in foster care. Anyone care to guess why?

Now, back to Karen’s story. After rubber-stamping the removal of Karen’s child, the court then ordered Maine to contact its New Mexico counterpart, the Children, Youth and Families Department, to arrange a placement in New Mexico. It took more than three months, but the child eventually was returned to Karen in New Mexico, but still under the supervision of the Maine family police. 

About three months later, a Maine caseworker called Karen. Apparently, Karen sounded intoxicated, so the Maine worker asked New Mexico authorities to check. According to the court decision, CYFD “took the child into custody” – but refused to keep him. The decision doesn’t say why. But as the Maine Monitor put it: 

Maine’s child welfare agency disagreed with its New Mexico counterpart. It took the child and put him in a foster placement across the country in Maine and thousands of miles away from his mother.  

As the story notes, at the time Maine had much more of a hair-trigger for taking away children than New Mexico – though New Mexico since has gotten far worse. 

Along with custody came the usual cookie-cutter “service plan.” Karen did it all, and then some.  As the court decision explained: 

The mother has resided in New Mexico throughout this case, having been a resident for her entire life. As to the requirements of the reunification plan, the court expressly noted that she went “above and beyond” what she has been asked to do by [the Department] to address her own individual issues.” She has completed intensive outpatient programs for both substance abuse and mental health treatment, in addition to receiving a neuropsychological evaluation. She continues to participate in mental health counseling and regularly attends parenting classes. Further, the mother joined and actively engaged with a domestic violence support group. All her random substance screenings have been negative. 

The mother “remotely attends many of [the child’s] medical and service provider appointments” and has become involved in multiple organizations, in New Mexico and online, focused on autism. She has a safe, well-maintained apartment in New Mexico, that is covered by a housing voucher. 

So what was the problem? Before reunifying the family, Maine DHHS wanted supervised in-person visits and a trial reunification. And DHHS insisted, for some reason, that had to happen in Maine. But hey, it’s not like they didn’t help: They paid Karen’s airfare and lodging – for two whole days – so she could search for housing she could afford in Maine. 

Now, consider: Even if you think everything DHHS did up to this point was justified, even if you think the supervised visits and trial reunification were essential, that still leaves one crucial question: Why didn’t DHHS simply send the caseworkers to New Mexico, bring the child, and supervise the visits there? Why didn’t the caseworkers stay in a hotel while the trial reunification took place in Karen’s actual home? 

But no.  I guess that would have been too inconvenient. Instead, the failure to find that apartment in Maine in two days became the sole reason a trial court terminated Karen’s son’s right to his mother (a more accurate description than termination of parental rights). 

There was also the matter of the foster parents, who have received high praise throughout, which suggests DHHS simply liked them better. 

Fortunately, the Supreme Judicial Court didn’t buy it. As the Monitor story noted: 

The high court reasoned that the mother had faced an impossible “Catch-22”: Either move to Maine, lose her housing voucher and be found unfit because she didn’t have stable housing; or stay in New Mexico with stable housing but be found unfit because she couldn’t be in Maine to take part in in-person supervised visits. 

So the termination has been undone. But that’s all. (In a concurring opinion, two justices suggested that the court should have done more.) The court did not order the family reunified. It did not order the child sent back to New Mexico. Maine DHHS is free to keep right on, in effect, holding him hostage in the foster home they love. They remain welcome to keep trying to dredge up other grounds to keep them apart forever – as long as they don’t repeat the mistake of explicitly blaming housing. 

That means, of course, that now that the case has dragged on so long, DHHS can take the ultimate low road and try to play the “bonding card” – since their preference for the foster parents is so clear. 

At least it will not go back to the same trial court judge. She’s retired.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, -- John Oliver Edition - week ending August 18, 2026

● It was bound to happen eventually: Sooner or later, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver would take on some of the enormous harm done by family policing. In Sunday’s program, they took on the enormous damage done by the way many state laws and family police agencies deal with substance use by pregnant women. The part about “child welfare” begins at 8:25 in. 

One footnote: Because the segment was built around so-called “fetal personhood” laws, the examples came from red states. But you don’t need such a statute to persecute pregnant women and do enormous harm to their newborns. One of the worst offenders is deep blue Vermont. 

● I really hope they were watching in New Mexico, where they are at peak foster-care panic in part because the Governor herself has screwed up on this issue, imposing a child-confiscation-at- birth policy whenever a newborn or the child’s mother tests positive for certain substances. Reason reports on the harm similar policies are causing nationwide.

● And the Santa Fe New Mexican reports on a tragedy from years ago that, thanks in part to the Governor’s policy, is even more likely to happen in that state today: 

The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department paid $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit in which the agency was accused of placing two young siblings with a family where the children were starved, beaten and one was sexually abused. … The children … suffered abuse over a number of years while staying with the Taos family, and CYFD failed to substantiate allegations of abuse against the family and signed off on the children’s adoption, leading to more abuse, the original civil complaint filed in the lawsuit alleges. 

The boy later said he was being starved by his adoptive parents, who were “only giving him one hot dog at noon and one hot dog for dinner,” and would withhold food from him for bad behavior, the lawsuit states. At the time, he hadn’t eaten in two days. 

The boy was also not allowed to leave his room to go to the restroom and was forced to relieve himself in his room. He also reported being brutally abused, including by beatings from older children in the home on the orders of his adoptive parents, the lawsuit states. His sibling, meanwhile, was being physically and sexually abused, it adds. 

Much of this happened ten years ago. But thanks to everyone from the governor to the state attorney general to their allies in advocacy and media, something like this is even more likely to happen today. Here’s why. 

● But, Boston Medical Center reports that, when it comes to substance use, Massachusetts is moving in the opposite direction – and, according to a new study, it’s working – cutting reports to the family police in half with no compromise of safety. From BMC’s press release: 

"As clinicians, we have long recognized that reflexive reporting feels punitive and rarely serves children's or families' best interests. This study helps establish that alternative, discretionary approaches are feasible and that clinical teams can appropriately identify infant safety concerns after birth," said Heather Hsu, MD, MPH, senior author of the study and a pediatric hospitalist at BMC.

"We hope this research encourages hospitals and policymakers across the country to consider what a more compassionate, evidence-based standard of care could mean for families everywhere." 

● New Mexico isn’t the only state where children are paying the price of foster-care panic. The Missouri Independent reports in this story that the number of children trapped in Missouri foster care soared by more than 14% over the past 16 months - in other words, since Sara Smith started running the state’s family police agency, the Children’s Division, bringing her take-the-child-and-run fanaticism to the job. 

The Independent reports that Smith has abolished team decision-making meetings that used to take place before children were removed. And she’s effectively demanded more adherence to a biased “risk assessment” form that includes a classic self-fulfilling prophecy: Any past contact with the Children’s Division, even if the family is innocent, is among the factors that raise the score. (That’s great news for anyone who wants to harass someone with repeated false reports, by the way.) 

Indeed, what may seem like neutral bureaucratic changes often reflect Smith’s take-the-child-and-run agenda: Almost all are geared to making foster care the easier answer for overwhelmed caseworkers, while making anything else harder. 

Oh, and in addition to the enormous harm she’s doing to children in individual cases, she’s plunged her entire agency into chaos. 

● The next item this week doesn’t mention child protective services at all. It doesn’t say a word about foster care. That’s the point. It’s a column by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. He tells the story of a high school teacher who had a student who was falling asleep in class. She found out why her student was falling asleep. She also found out the student was hungry. But she didn’t make everything worse by making the knee-jerk call to the family police. What she did instead is a perfect example of what it means to be, in Joyce McMillan’s words, a mandatory supporter instead of a mandatory reporter. 

Yet, for some reason, this never made it into the latest edition of "The Good Stuff in Child Welfare." I guess that would happen only if the children had been taken away - but got free haircuts.

● Gene Weingarten has an update to his column about a mother jailed and awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges after she forgot that she’d left her child in a hot car. Here’s his first column about the case. Such charges are, of course, more likely to be brought if the parent is nonwhite. And, as Weingarten points out, for the surviving children, there is an extra element of cruelty here: 

Deja Coleman’s oldest son, Dinero, is profoundly autistic. He articulates mostly in unintelligible sounds. In asking the court to grant Coleman’s release on bond, Ford argued that her continued incarceration was an unconscionable added cruelty to a vulnerable innocent: 

“The only person on the planet that her nonverbal six year old son can communicate with is her.” 

And contrast what happened to this mother to what is happening to the very rich Tesla investor described in a Washington Post story that begins this way:

Tad Park believes in Tesla. He believes in the company so much that he once put his kids in the path of a Tesla running in Full Self-Driving mode, to prove the technology was safe enough to avoid running them over.

What happened to him? Nothing.

● Yes, again: Another exposé of another institution rife with abuse, where the instructions from the top allegedly were to cover it up and delay seeking outside help. This time the story is from WPLN Public Radio in Tennessee and ProPublica. This time, it’s a juvenile justice institution. But remember, this is Tennessee, where the family police agency wanted a change in law to allow them to throw in jail any foster child who they felt was getting out of line, or even threatening to get out of line.  

● Also yet again: Still another study documenting how providing concrete help reduces not only what agencies call neglect but physical abuse as well.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 12, 2026

● The Marshall Project and CBS News Sunday Morning produced a stunning in-depth report on how the family police persecute pregnant women if their newborns allegedly test positive for even trace amounts of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Was the child unharmed? It doesn’t matter. Was the marijuana prescribed by a doctor? It doesn’t matter. The vengeance of the system takes precedence over anything, including the harm to children whose parents can’t make a living because they’re on a “central registry” or the newborns separated from their mothers at birth while the mothers who can’t make bail are thrown into jail. You can watch the story here or below and read the Marshall Project series here. 

See also this CBS News Sunday Morning interview with Dr. Stephen Patrick, a doctor in neonatal ICUs and a researcher on how the opioid crisis affects pregnant women and infants. Dr. Patrick … 

… talks with CBS News' Erin Moriarty about what happens after a mother tests positive for a substance during pregnancy. Patrick argues that automatically referring mothers to child welfare or law enforcement over a single drug test - even for substances like marijuana, which are legal in much of the country - can create more harm than it prevents: driving women away from prenatal care, disproportionately affecting Black and Native American families, and separating moms from newborns without evidence of harm. 

● For years, New York City’s family police agency claimed its use of “predictive analytics” – or, as it should be called, computerized racial profiling - was confined to one itty bitty algorithm far from affecting frontline practice decisions. If that ever was true, it sure isn’t now.  Defector has just exposed the full extent of the profiling. It’s the kind of scheme the Trump Administration wants to see come to your state, too. 

● Seventeen years ago, Gene Weingarten, then a reporter and editor for The Washington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize for a story about children who die when their parents forget they’ve left them in hot cars. Now, on his Substack, he reports on another case, from Georgia.  

Among many other points, Weingarten notes that “statistically, prosecutors are significantly more likely to seek criminal penalties in these cases when the defendant is dark-skinned.” Indeed, the one study I know of concerning the issue, which used occupation as a surrogate measure for race and class found: 

One particularly important and disturbing finding was the disparate treatment of parents from different socioeconomic groups. Parents working in blue-collar professions or who were unemployed were four times more likely to be prosecuted than parents from wealthier socioeconomic groups. 

As you read Weingarten’s story, please be sure to compare how this mother is being treated to the treatment afforded this Georgia father, who, unambiguously, was at fault in endangering his children.  

And consider as well: while the authorities gleefully take their swing at the mother, the blow is landing hardest on the surviving children. Her network of friends has rallied around to cushion the blow as much as possible, but they are still suffering because of this separation, suffering that may well endure even if the family is reunited. 

That cruelty is brought home in an update Weingarten posted today (Aug. 12) which concludes this way:

Deja Coleman’s oldest son, Dinero, is profoundly autistic. He articulates mostly in unintelligible sounds. 

In asking the court to grant Coleman’s release on bond, Ford argued that her continued incarceration was an unconscionable added cruelty to a vulnerable innocent: 

“The only person on the planet that her nonverbal six year old son can communicate with is her.”

● A case from Georgia also is the focus of this excellent New York Times story about families harassed by the family police for allowing their children to exercise reasonable childhood independence – and the laws some states have passed to try to put a stop to such harassment. 

● In the years since the federal Indian Child Welfare Act became law, 17 states have strengthened protection for Native American children by passing their own versions of ICWA. Now, The Imprint reports, a nonprofit known as the Uniform Law Commission has drafted a model law for the remaining states to consider. From the story: 

If enacted by state legislatures, the proposed rules would strengthen requirements that social workers make “active efforts” to prevent family separation, such as prioritizing tribal kin for out-of-home placements and providing Indigenous parents more opportunities to reunite with children before their parental rights are terminated. It would also ensure that parental abuse or neglect findings are not solely based on “community or family poverty.” 

… [T]he model law, the uniform state ICWA proposal is more expansive and detailed than the federal law. It offers clearer guidance on cultural competency, including addressing language barriers in child welfare proceedings. It also clarifies that tribal law should carry the same weight as state law. 

● And there’s this, from Medscape: 

Children with complex chronic conditions are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system and their caregivers are significantly more likely to be investigated for medical neglect, according to a new analysis published in Pediatrics.

The findings underscore the need for primary care clinicians to distinguish between caregivers who are unwilling to provide necessary medical care to their children or are unable because of transportation, finances, and inadequate social support, and to exhaust efforts to aid caregivers in fulfilling those needs before reporting. 

In this week’s reminder that the horror stories go in all directions 

● From NewsNation An example of the horrors going in all directions for the same children: 

Julissa Turpin thought that she was safe after being rescued in 2018 from the California “house of horrors” she shared with 12 siblings and their abusive parents, Louise and David Turpin. 

With Louise and David behind bars, Julissa and several of her siblings rejoiced in their freedom and looked forward to moving into a foster home. Caseworkers assured them they’d be safe, and they believed it. “I was so vulnerable and (it was) easy to believe anything that people were telling me,” Julissa Turpin, 20, tells NewsNation. 

But she ended up being re-abused in the foster home where she and several of her siblings were sent. ...