There's a court hearing scheduled for today in Rochester in a case where the real solution is: Go away and leave this family alone.
[UPDATE, JULY 2: The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports that the case is likely to be dismissed - but not before harassing the family some more. Because child protective services agencies can never, ever just admit they were wrong, the parents are going to be forced to take "parenting classes" when they return to Tennessee.]
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| Clarissa and Ryan Webster (Photo from the Gofundme page created to help pay their legal expenses) |
There’s a hypothetical example I often use when illustrating
the fact that even determining responsibility for a child’s death is
surprisingly subjective. It goes like
this:
Early one Sunday morning, a young child finds a way to unlatch the back door while his parents are asleep. He wanders off, falls into a body of water and drowns. Accident or neglect? If the body of water is a pool behind a McMansion, it probably will be labeled an accident. If it’s a pond behind a trailer park, it probably will be labeled neglect.
I’ve previously written about a real-life case that
parallels this hypothetical almost exactly – and how child protective services made
everything worse.
A far less tragic real-life version of that hypothetical is playing
out right now in the Rochester, New
York, suburb of Irondequoit. It’s far
less tragic because the child is not only alive, she is entirely unhurt –
physically. But she and her siblings probably
suffered emotional trauma, not at the hands of the parents, but at the hands of
child protective services. Because of
where the children wound up, the trauma is not as great as that being inflicted
on children at the border by Donald Trump. But it is equally unnecessary.
It’s happening in a county where child welfare is careening
full-speed backwards under the “leadership” of a county executive whose interest
in children appears confined to what will score her the most points
politically.
Here’s what happened, according to a page established
by the family’s Nashville, Tennessee-area church to raise funds for their
legal defense:
Ryan [Webster] and his wife, Clarissa (who is currently 22 weeks pregnant), and their 5 children recently traveled to Rochester, NY [from Tennessee] for the purpose of selling their converted school bus (RV) to a family friend who needs a mobile residence in order to help take care of her mother who is receiving aggressive cancer treatment.
They arrived in Rochester after an exhausting two-day drive (with Ryan driving the bus and Clarissa driving the van full of children) on Thursday evening, June 21. The following morning (Friday, June 22), their youngest child woke up abnormally early and got out of the bus while everyone else was sleeping. She wandered over to a neighbor’s front yard. The neighbor, not knowing who their daughter was, contacted the local police.
According to the news
accounts, the parents also called police as soon as they realized their
daughter was missing.
Here’s what should have happened next:
1. 1. Police return child.
2. 2. Parents thank police profusely.
3. 3. Everyone goes on their way.
And that almost certainly is what would have happened had
the child wandered away from a McMansion in one of Rochester’s more affluent
suburbs, such as Brighton or Pittsford. Conversely,
had this family been Black, what ultimately happened to the children probably
would have been far worse.
In the middle of the child welfare bias scale
But this family falls somewhere in the midrange of the child
welfare bias scale: Not well off, but white.
To police, the living arrangement they originally
encountered probably looked like the functional equivalent of that hypothetical
trailer park. It probably didn’t help
that the children are homeschooled – and there is a
bias against homeschooling among many in child welfare.
So even though the police themselves think what happened in
this case was an unfortunate accident the couple were arrested on misdemeanor
charges of “child endangerment” and all of the children are now in the legal
custody of Monroe County Child Protective Services.
Fortunately, they were not placed with strangers. According
to updates on the fundraising page, thanks to a massive outpouring of support,
including one testimonial after another from members of the family’s church, the
entire family initially was allowed to move in with the friends to whom they
were planning to sell the bus. Those friends who, remember, already have to
help a seriously-ill relative of their own, were required to keep watch over
Ryan and Clarissa at all times. Then
custody was transferred to Ryan’s parents.
As the Websters themselves have written: “We are not
insensible to how much of a blessing it is to be allowed to be with them, when
many others who are wrongly accused are not so fortunate.”
A court hearing is scheduled for today, and I think the
chances are good that the family will be reunited.
So, no problem right?
It was just an abundance of caution, right? After all we have to “err on the side of border security” – oh, sorry, I mean “err on
the side of the child” don’t we?
Wrong.
The way to err on the side of the child in cases such as
this is to leave the child, and the family, alone and go away. The intrusion of
police and child protective services on this family, turning their lives upside
down and questioning the children will leave psychological scars . They are likely to wonder if they police will
come back again – and take them away. The consequences probably won’t be “catastrophic”
as one professor of pediatrics described what’s happening to the children at
the border, but they may well be serious.
Playing politics with children’s lives
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| Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo |
It is likely that part of the reason this trauma was
inflicted is because the family happened to be in a
county where the county
executive is playing politics with children’s lives.
There was a high-profile child abuse death in the Rochester
area last year, and ever since County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo has been running
around trying to show everyone how tough she is on child abuse. (In Upstate New
York individual counties run child welfare.) There is almost certainly a foster-care panic underway, with more children
needlessly investigated and removed from their homes.
Earlier this year, when the county was awarded a grant to
replicate a high-quality model of family defense, a model that improves the safety
and well-being of children – at no cost to the county - she
stepped in and refused to let the county office of public defender accept
the grant. Then she canceled the county’s
differential response program, even though more than two dozen studies across
the country have found
this approach to be safe.
But the children of Ryan and Clarissa Webster aren’t the
only ones who have suffered. Other
children are suffering, too. We just don’t know who they are. While child
protective services, the police assorted lawyers and the courts are tied up
wasting all this time, money and making the trauma for an innocent family
worse, what Monroe County child in real danger is being missed?
P.S.: WHAT IF IT HAD HAPPENED IN PITTSBURGH?
In
one sense, things might have been better had this happened in Pittsburgh and
surrounding Allegheny County Pa. But in another sense, it probably would be
much worse. My guess is that had this happened in Pittsburgh and
surrounding Allegheny County, the child welfare agency never would have taken
custody. Allegheny County has a good
record of resisting foster-care panic.
On
the other hand, the report alleging child abuse would have gone straight into
the massive database Pittsburgh uses for its child welfare “predictive analytics”
algorithm, the Allegheny
Family Screening Tool (AFST). It doesn’t matter that the report was false.
Previous reports, whether true or not, are a key factor in raising the “risk
score” coughed up by AFST and stamped on a child like an invisible “scarlet
number” if anyone ever reports these parents for alleged child maltreatment
again. The fact that the referral came from law enforcement might raise the
risk score still further.
That
would make it more likely the children would be removed, and kept in foster
care for a long time.
And
from that moment on, the children would be labeled more likely to mistreat
their own children when they grow up – because they had been the subject of a
report alleging child abuse when they were growing up, and that is a “risk
factor.”
