Meet the family police agency so arrogant, and so sure of its near-absolute power, that it can admit it tears apart families because of poverty – and check out the consequences

The Indiana State Capitol. Photo by Warren LeMay

In the face of overwhelming evidence that family police agencies – a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies – routinely confuse family poverty with neglect, consigning the children to the chaos of foster care, system apologists have a standard mantra: Oh, it’s not just poverty, they say, and then they chant over and over again as if it’s one word drugsmentalhealthdomesticviolence, drugsmentalhealthdomesticviolence. 

Of course, some cases do indeed involve one or more of these. Many others do not.  And even when one of these factors is present, at bottom, it’s usually still a poverty case. 

I addressed this in detail in this presentation to a Kempe Center conference.  

I return to the topic now because one family police agency has effectively admitted it. The admission comes in this outstanding story from the Indianapolis Star. The story superbly weaves together a complex narrative that exposes a whole slew of family police failings. But I want to focus on how the story illustrates what the drugsmentalhealthdomesticviolence excuse overlooks. 

The story focuses on what happened to children placed in what was, if the allegations are true, a foster and adoptive home rife with horrific abuse; abuse the Indiana Department of Child Services managed to ignore year after year after year. 

It focuses promarily on one mother, Nikki Williams, and her children, a story that begins in 2011.  Statistically, it wasn’t a case of poverty alone. But take a closer look. 

● Yes, there was a tumultuous relationship – one that caseworkers might rush to label as domestic violence, though there is nothing in the story to indicate that. But Williams did exactly the right thing. 

As the story explains:

25-year-old Williams was working two jobs to support her five children and living with her boyfriend in Attica, a small town along the Wabash River in Fountain County. But after growing tired of his drinking and frequent arguing, she said she decided to leave him, bouncing between the homes of family members instead. 

As is often the case when a woman leaves a lousy relationship, it becomes harder for her to support her family – so it’s a poverty case.

● Yes, there was drug use: marijuana. You know, the drug that’s celebrated when affluent mothers use it but makes you suspect if you’re also, uh, poor. So it’s a poverty case. 

It was the pot that first brought the family police into Williams’ life.  But it was the poverty that caused her to lose her children for their entire childhoods.  They were placed in the alleged house of horrors of Brian and Sonja Stafford in May 2011. Just two months later, DCF was looking to terminate the Williams children’s rights to live with their mother. 

Again from the story: 

The agency first got involved in her life because they suspected drug use; she admitted to smoking weed and submitted to a drug test to prove she was free of any hard drugs. She thought her willingness to be forthcoming would help her case, but instead it gave the agency more evidence to intervene.  

From that point on, nearly every aspect of Williams’ life was analyzed by welfare officials. DCS officials told her at a case conference in July 2011 that they were considering terminating her parental rights.  

Williams had completed nearly all of the requirements DCS had asked of her, DCS records she provided to IndyStar show, receiving glowing reviews from caseworkers on her parenting skills and love for her children.   

But then we see a family police agency so secure in its near absolute power that it can admit what such agencies usually deny. The story continues: 

But the agency was worried about her ability to provide for her children while making just $7.25 an hour at Arby’s, writing in the documents that she wouldn’t be able to find stable housing without a better job. 

 “(The Fountain County DCS supervisor) told me that anyone can be a good mom, but if I'm not financially stable, being a good mom didn't count,” she said.   

Indiana DCS said it could not comment on the specifics of the case, but said the decision to terminate parental rights comes down to a family's unique circumstances, including a parent's ability to provide basic necessities for their children. [Emphasis added.] 

As for that concern about not being able to find housing: that’s something of an obsession at Indiana DCS. In 2023, DCS took away more children because of “lack of housing” than for physical and sexual abuse combined. 

Williams herself ultimately succumbed to these claims, surrendering her parental rights on the assumption that the children were bound to be better off in the foster home. 

And then, with her children permanently separated from her, her grief and despair were so deep that she turned to methamphetamine. So congratulations, Indiana DCS: You got your drug abuse problem -- because you created it. 

For the children it was so much worse. The alleged horrors in the foster and adoptive home are outlined in detail in the Star story. 

Most of Williams’ children are now adults. As is so often the case when children age out of the system, they found their way home and are reunited with their mother. 

But the cruelty of Indiana DCS seems to know no bounds. Consider what the story tells us about the fate of the youngest child: 

Clean for a decade now, married and finally with stable housing, Williams has reconnected with all of her adult children but has yet to see her youngest daughter, who has been in the custody of another foster family since the start of the Stafford investigation.  

Though she’s a much different person than she was when she signed the papers terminating her rights in 2011, that signature effectively makes her a stranger in the eyes of the state. 

Her youngest daughter hardly knows her as her mom, Williams said. 

The Context: Family policing in Indiana

What happened to the Williams children could happen anywhere – but it’s more likely to happen in Indiana. In a previous post to this blog I summarized the data:

● Nationwide, 37% of children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18.  In Indiana, it’s 58%.  Nationwide, 53% of Black children will have to endure this trauma. In Indiana, it’s 79% - the highest rate in America. 

● In any given year, among all children, Indiana takes them from their homes at a rate 66% above the national average, even when rates of family poverty are factored in. 

● When going up against this family police juggernaut, families often are almost literally defense-less – because their lawyers often have so little time and so many clients. Many Indiana counties want to keep it that way. One in five actually turns down federal funds to improve representation for parents and also for children. One county court administrator explained that county’s refusal this way: “[T]he system we have works well.” 

None of this is because Indiana is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than the national average.  In fact, in Indiana in 2023, 86% of the time, when children were thrown into foster care, their parents were not even accused of physical or sexual abuse. Forty percent of the time, there wasn’t even an allegation of drug abuse.

And as we’ve just seen, when there is an allegation of drug abuse, it may not mean much.