Pete Buttigieg faces the family police

Pete Buttigeig

Much of America just got its first partial lesson in how the child welfare system really works (and why it should be called a family policing system). Two four-year-old children were the unwilling teachers. 

What happened to the children of Pete Buttigieg is horrible. It is not meant to diminish this harm in any way to add something at least as important: More than one-third of all American children and more than half of all Black children will endure the same experience. For most of them, it will be even worse. 

By now, you probably know about what happened to the four-year-old twins adopted by former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor, former Transportation Secretary and former (and perhaps future) presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten. Below are some key points, and some of the lessons that can be learned from his family’s ordeal. 

Key points: 

● The report to the Michigan child abuse hotline was blatantly, obviously, false and malicious. Law enforcement ultimately concluded that it was also politically motivated. 

● The allegations were ludicrous. The caller did not say that he actually witnessed any abuse. Nor did he say that one of the Buttigieg children told him about any abuse. Rather, Buttigieg says he was told: 

The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.

That was enough to a bring child protective services caseworker – and a police officer -- to the Buttigieg’s Grand Traverse, Michigan home. 

● It didn’t stop there. CPS and the police refused to even tell Buttigieg what he was accused of. The children, four-year-old twins, were separated from their parents for 24 hours. They were placed with grandparents and then taken somewhere “in town” where they were separated from each other for hour-long “forensic interviews” with total strangers. 

As Buttigieg writes: 

My in-laws had to explain to my children, whom we have taught to avoid talking to strangers, that they would need to have a conversation, one at a time and for nearly an hour each, in a place they’d never been, with adults they did not know, who would ask questions we weren’t allowed to know either. For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen. We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime. 

● The Buttigieg children were in foster care – even though it will never show up as such in Michigan family police agency reports to the federal government. Buttigieg and his husband were coerced into placing the children in out-of-home care. The placement lasted 24 hours. That’s foster care. It is the least harmful form of foster care – placement with relatives – but it’s still foster care. But because it was all done informally, the federal government will allow Michigan to exclude it from its figures for entries into foster care. That’s why such placements are called, of course, hidden foster care. 

● This was almost the least amount of harm the family police can do. (The harm would have been less had the children not been removed from the home at all.) Buttigieg says everyone was polite and professional, and, as noted above, the children stayed with relatives. What he encountered can best be called CPS-lite.  I’ve written before about what a shock that can be for white, middle-class families, and how the white middle-class version of a CPS encounter differs from the norm. 

But even when it’s CPS-lite, there’s still plenty of trauma. Buttigieg writes: 

The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life. I tried to get my head around the idea that I had been accused of something so serious that I couldn’t be alone around my own children, and had consented to have them interviewed by strangers, without my knowing where the accusation had come from or even what it contained. 

Now our family is left to deal with the aftermath. I worry about any unseen effects this had on our kids, on Chasten and me, and on the rest of our family. Even though the accusation was absurdly and obviously false, and was promptly rejected by law enforcement, I still worry about the harm it has done. Chasten and I worry about who else might try to do this kind of thing, to us or to others. … I am a reasonable man. I try to keep as calm and low-key as possible. But I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this. … this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began. 

Now, let’s consider the lessons: 

● In media, social and otherwise, the incident is being treated largely as some kind of bizarre outlier and a sign of the increasing ugliness and polarization of our politics. That’s largely how Buttigieg himself framed it. 

But perhaps the most important lesson in all of this is that it is not an outlier. Not by a longshot. 

While the motives are rarely political, thousands of children are victimized every year by the weaponization of child protective services. It can be educators, trying to bully parents who are fighting for the special education to which their child is entitled. It can be landlords harassing tenants, neighbors harassing neighbors, ex-spouses harassing each other. 

By definition, no one knows what percentage of calls are made maliciously. But in New Mexico, for example, it was so bad that officials at their hotline issued a plea to callers to stop using it for vendettas. 

The fact that it happened to the children of Pete Buttigieg simply brought it to the attention of millions of Americans – including Pete Buttigieg -- who had no idea the system worked that way. 

The danger of anonymous reporting

● It’s all made vastly easier by the fact that 48 states, including Michigan, allow anonymous reports. Many states even encourage them with constant reminders that callers don’t have to give their names. News stories about child abuse often end with the same great big notice, along with the hotline phone number. Buttigieg writes: 

To be clear, making a false report of this kind is a crime. That’s as it should be, both to protect the innocent from false accusations, and to preserve the integrity of a process designed to protect children from harm. I don’t know how much we can do about it, but so help me God, if there is any way to press civil or criminal charges over this, we will. Not just for our own sakes but to draw a line that I thought everyone already recognized: do not mess with someone’s kids. 

But he probably won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. And an entire child welfare establishment wants to keep it that way. That’s why so far only two states, New York and Texas, have had the courage to replace anonymous reporting with confidential reporting. The accused still doesn’t know who accused them, but at least the hotline has to know. As for the fearmongering that’s used to defeat such laws, you can read a whole slew of news accounts and commentaries debunking it: 

amNY has a particularly good story about the New York law. The Imprint also has a story about the signing. So does the New York Daily News. And before it passed: ProPublica published a good story on the bill. Also: there was an excellent editorial from the Syracuse Post-Standard, a superb commentary in The Imprint, from Prof. Dale Margolin Cecka, Director of the Family Violence Litigation Clinic at Albany Law School, and another outstanding commentary from the lawyers who regularly represent children in these cases, concerning why this law is needed – and why 48 states and D.C. should follow New York and Texas in enacting such laws.  

The scope of the child welfare surveillance state

● Now consider the sheer scope of the intrusion by family police. Before they turn 18, more than one-third of all children and more than half of all Black children will be forced to endure much of what the Buttigieg children endured. For some, it will be better; for most, it’s likely to be worse. Most of the calls leading to these investigations are not malicious, but more than 80% of the reports are false, and many of the rest are cases in which poverty is confused with neglect. 

● Let’s go back to Buttigieg’s statement that “I am a reasonable man. I try to keep as calm and low-key as possible.” That was made easier for him by the simple fact that he has resources and a keen understanding of power and politics. In this case, it also was easier because the people who confronted him were not at all confrontational. On the contrary, Buttigieg takes pains to praise their politeness, professionalism and efforts to put the children at ease. 

But what if they weren’t? What if they’d pounded on the door in the middle of the night? What if they were harsh and demanding? What if they immediately stripsearched the children? What if their father had no clout, no resources and nowhere to turn?  What if all that caused a protective father to lose his cool? And what if that father were Black?  Would the twins be home now? 

In child welfare, where there's smoke there's usually just smoke

● There are many reasons Buttigieg should worry about the same thing happening again. In most states there is no such thing as crying wolf in child welfare. Often, if a call alleges something that, if true, would be child abuse, it’s screened in for investigation – no matter how thin the evidence, no matter how absurd the allegation and no matter how many times an anonymous caller has made similar unfounded allegations before. Obviously, that should change and screening should be tightened. 

But it’s even worse. In almost all states some sort of record is kept of every allegation, even those labeled unfounded, which is more than 80% of them. And keep in mind, for an allegation to be unfounded that means a worker found so little evidence she couldn’t even check a box on a form saying it was slightly more likely than not that the alleged abuse or neglect occurred. 

But those unfounded allegations are ticking time bombs. Whenever someone suggests they be expunged entirely someone in the take-the-child-and-run-all-families-are-guilty-until-proven-innocent crowd will insist they need to be kept to detect “patterns” because after all, they say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” 

So if there’s another anonymous call made against Buttigieg the existence of the first call ratchets up suspicion  --  after all, where there’s smoke … 

It’s even worse in any community that relies on a predictive analytics algorithm. Those algorithms are likely to consider any previous report, unfounded or not, reason to raise the “risk score” on a family. 

And lawmakers love this stuff. A bill likely to become law in North Carolina requires what amounts to an extra push to take away children in any case where there are “three or more reports to Child Protective Services in a 12-month period” – no matter how ludicrous those reports may be. 

Good thing the Buttigiegs don’t live in North Carolina. 

The premise behind retaining false reports is, itself, false. In child welfare, where there’s smoke, there’s usually just more smoke. And no one can see clearly through smoke. 

● It is striking how little Buttigieg knew about how the child protective services system works. He had no idea any of this could be done to his children. That’s not a knock on Buttigieg. It’s simply due to the fact that, even if you’re in public life and the family policing system isn’t part of your portfolio (it probably didn’t arise much at the Department of Transportation) you are unlikely to know any of this – if you are white and middle class. Though there are exceptions, white middle-class status provides a great deal of immunity from encounters with family policing – though being gay weakens that immunity, and the report against Buttigieg may illustrate that. 

In contrast, if you’re poor and nonwhite, you may not know your rights, but you know that the family police are omnipresent in your neighborhood and you need to factor that in to every decision you make, from when to seek help to how much to confide in a helping professional. (For an excellent discussion of this, see Prof. Kelley Fong‘s brilliant book, Investigating Families.) 

● Indeed, even with all Buttigieg’s knowledge and experience in power, it’s not clear if he even knew he could say no to the CPS worker and the police and demand they get a court order. He didn’t get a lawyer until the next day (and, of course, unlike the overwhelming majority of parents in his position, he could afford a good one). This is why all states should have “family Miranda” laws, requiring the family police to tell families their rights. 

Left and Right share responsibility

● And finally, a note about politics: Some of the social media commentary from my fellow liberals has been quick to blame it all on the hatred stirred up by President Trump and his followers. Concerning this particular case, I think they’re probably right. But there’s more to it. The system that allowed this to be done to Pete Buttigieg’s children wasn’t created by Donald Trump. In its modern form, it dates back largely to the 1960s and 1970s, a time when party control of the White House shifted back and forth and Democrats controlled Congress.

The giant child welfare surveillance state, the mandatory reporting laws, the permission and even encouragement of anonymous reporting, the massive power to tear apart families, the lack of any serious due process, and horrible laws like the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the Adoption and Safe Families Act – almost all of it well-intentioned – are bipartisan failures.  

Or, to put it another way: The person who tried to fire a weapon of family destruction at Pete Buttigieg’s children may well have been from the extreme Right. But when it came to building the weapon, loading it, and handing it to the shooter, the Left has been complicit, and we need to own up to it. 

Even now, three Democratic governors have tweeted their sympathy with Buttigieg and his family. All are in states that allow anonymous reports. Will they move to change that? 

It took the worst elements of liberalism and conservatism to create this horrible system, it will take the best elements of both to fix it. Some of us are working on it – together – through a group known as United Family Advocates.

When injustice hides in plain sight

The New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is examining racism in the New York family policing system (a more accurate term than “child welfare” system).  New York’s institutional providers of family defense prepared in-depth written testimony that is a report in itself.

As I read it, I had to stop every few pages.  Just reading the first-hand accounts of soul-crushing injustice visited upon overwhelmingly poor nonwhite families was tough.  Yet these families have to live it every day.

I’ve excerpted part of one section below – the section on what, in New York, is called the family court.  That’s not because the injustices chronicled in that section are worse than the rest – but they are easier for the rest of us to see for ourselves.

Anyone in New York – especially any journalist -- who doesn’t believe what these lawyers are telling us can head for the family court in their borough or county and watch.  For more than 25 years in New York State, by order of that state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, these hearings have been open.  

Unfortunately, New York reporters almost never take advantage of this opportunity.  In fact, in 2011 a New York Times reporter started showing up just to see what would happen and was repeatedly turned away.  Judges and court officials either never knew, or forgot, that the hearings were supposed to be open.  The Court of Appeals had to send them a reminder. 

So now might be a good time to put the judges to the test again – and this time, stick around to see the injustice that’s been hiding in plain sight. 

And not just in New York.  In large part because of the work of New York’s family defenders, at least in New York City the system is one of the least horrible in America.  Wherever you are, it’s probably even worse.  And if where you are happens to be Texas, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Washington State, Oregon, Colorado and, for media only, Illinois, you can go see just how awful things are.  Admittedly, in some of these courts it may take time before an observer can see the difference in how Black and white families are treated – because it may take awhile before you see a white family in these courts. 

Meanwhile, here’s some of what New York City’s family defenders see every day.  And here’s something else to think about as you read it:  

One of New York’s, indeed the nation’s, most important, and bravest, anti-racist voices in the field, Angela Burton, was fired from her job with the New York State court system after she submitted an outline of remarks she planned to make to a meeting of the New York Advisory Committee.  Her bosses felt her remarks would “undermine public confidence in the court’s impartiality.” 

EXCERPTS FROM THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF NEW YORK CITY FAMILY DEFENDERS [Emphasis added.] 

The structure and practices of family court and the laws family court judges apply harm families and act as a force of destruction to Black communities. Too often family courts rubber-stamp the decisions of the family policing agencies, and fail to function as the intended check on the system. … 

From its failure to follow governing laws and ensure due process, to its prioritization of expediency over fairness, humanity, and just outcomes, the family court functions as an arm of state power, rather than a neutral arbiter of fairness and justice. … On a regular basis our clients face the following harms and disregard for their humanity and dignity in family court:  

1. Being called by generic labels like “mom,” “birth mom,” “dad,” and “paramour,” instead of by their actual names, and the use of other dehumanizing language;

 2. Having cases scheduled and called with no regard whatsoever of the parent’s schedule, obligations, or the arduous demands of court ordered services; 

3. Experiencing the other players in the system insensitively laughing, joking, rolling their eyes, and making light of the proceedings in total disregard for the profound impact the proceeding is having on them and their family; and 

4. Being subjected to the reliance on tropes and narratives deeply rooted in this country’s history of anti-Black racism, classism, and other forms of structural oppression. 

From the moment of a parent’s first contact with the family court, the system dehumanizes parents and families and deprives them of the opportunity to be fully heard. While family investigations go on for days, weeks, or even months prior to the filing of allegations in family court, parents are typically unable to meet their defense counsel until the day the petition is filed (sometimes even on the second or third appearance) and often only moments before a family is called before the court for the first time, … 

There is no legal obligation for [the Administration for Children’s Services] ACS or prosecutors in family policing cases to provide exculpatory or exonerating evidence. This results in presentations to the court that are extremely one-sided, resembling a diatribe making a case against a parent without the balance that could give the court an accurate picture of the family. 

The unnecessary and inexplicable, and in our view intentional, delay in providing information is so normalized in the courts, that we are greeted with astonishment when we propose that we receive the information earlier. 

Time and time again, we have seen cases with similar facts have vastly differing results, with the only measurable distinction between the families being the color of the parent’s skin. For example, when allegations of neglect relate to a one time incident of excessive corporal punishment, white and Asian children are more likely to remain at home with their families, while Black families are consistently separated, with the court relying on racist tropes that the parent is “angry” and unable to control their actions. The data also supports our observations in court, showing that although the percentage of reports leading to [court] filings for Black parents and Latine parents are similar, the reports made against Black parents are 50% more likely to result in removal than those made against Latine families. 

From their first appearance in court, Black families are not looked at holistically, and are met with suspicion and contempt. For example, expressions of emotion by a Black parent whose children are being torn away are often viewed by both the court and caseworkers as evidence of a larger mental health or anger issue, consistent with racist perceptions and tropes about Black people—rather than recognizing an emotional response to family separation as fundamentally human. 

A parent who is deferential to the agency and the court – who is “polite,” easy to work with, and who expresses “insight” in terms that they admit full wrongdoing – is more likely to have a swift and favorable resolution. In contrast, a parent who expresses emotions about the separation of their families, who questions unreasonable directives from the agency and court, and who raises concerns about the care their child receives in the foster system, will often be viewed as “angry,” “difficult,” “non-compliant,” and “lacking insight,” which will delay reunification and progress in family court. 

Prosecuting attorneys attend court conferences intended to discuss settlement and visitation completely unprepared, without settlement offers or positions on expanding visits or other plans for achieving reunification. Cases with extremely weak allegations often unnecessarily take months or years to resolve, and then only after attorneys for parents force the agency’s hand by filing motions to compel discovery or to dismiss. The ACS attorney will then often withdraw their petitions or offer a very short adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, ultimately subjecting families to months or years of unnecessary surveillance and family policing involvement. 

Prosecuting attorneys regularly fail to provide discovery until the eve or day of trial, making it difficult, if not impossible, for defense counsel to advise parents about the potential risks and consequences of settlement, or to be prepared to move forward with trial. Parents regularly take off work to appear in court for a fact-finding hearing, only to find out that the ACS attorney failed to subpoena a witness or essential records, or is simply unprepared to move forward. Adjournments are liberally granted by the court in these circumstances, despite the ACS attorney’s lack of diligence. The resulting delays subject families to needless separation, unnecessary surveillance and stress, and demonstrate an utter disrespect for families. 

While these delays are intolerable and grounded in a racist disregard for the time and well-being of Black and Latine families, the family court’s efforts to address them also often display the same racist disregard. For example, while adjournments are repeatedly granted to ACS, a parent’s request for an adjournment, no matter the basis, is routinely denied. A parent’s absence will lead to an immediate default, which carries with it negative legal consequences, while the court will grant multiple adjournments when the ACS worker is repeatedly absent, even when their participation is essential. 

[O]ften, Black parents are treated across the board with greater skepticism and distrust. Courts question the intentions of Black parents, their love and commitment to their children, as well as their willingness and ability to follow court orders while white parents are generally given the benefit of the doubt and trusted to overwhelmingly have good intentions and stronger protective capacity.   

The NCCPR Index of Family Police Oppression

An important new study estimates the chances of children encountering the family police (a more accurate term than “child protective services”) during their childhoods. I first learned about the study when Prof. Robert Latham, Associate Director of the Children & Youth Law Clinic at the University of Miami linked to it on his excellent blog.  

The study measures the likelihood of being subjected to a child abuse investigation, the likelihood of being forced into foster care and the likelihood children will have their parents taken from them forever, through termination of parental rights. 

The study illustrates the horrifying ubiquity of family policing.  We have a full discussion of the findingson this blog here.  This is a Harper’s-style index of some of the study findings:

THE NCCPR INDEX OF FAMILY POLICE OPPRESSION

13 – The percentage of Native American children in Minnesota whose parents will be taken from them forever. 

14 – The percentage of Black children in West Virginia whose parents will be taken from them forever. 

15 – The percentage of Hispanic children in Maine whose parents will be taken from them forever. 

28 – The percentage of Hispanic children in Maine who will be forced into foster care at some point during their childhoods. 

32 – The percentage of Black children in West Virginia who will be forced into foster care at some point during their childhoods. 

47 – The percentage of Native American children in Minnesota who will be forced into foster care at some point during their childhoods. 

54 – The percentage of white children in Indiana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

54 – The percentage of Hispanic children in Indiana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

64 -- The percentage of Native American children in Minnesota who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

67 – The percentage of Black children in Arizona who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods. 

73 – The percentage of Native Alaska children who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods. 

73 – The percentage of Black children in Kentucky who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods. 

74 – The percentage of Black children in Montana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods. 

79 – The percentage of Black children in Indiana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods. 

Source: Youngmin Yi, Frank Edwards et. al., State-level variation in the cumulative prevalence of child welfare system contact, 2015 – 2019 (Children and Youth Services Review 147 (2023) 

PART TWO OF FOUR: Reputation laundering in "child welfare": The Child Welfare League of America

CWLA co-opts the rhetoric of reform to promote the same old family policing agenda 

The hearings about the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection have prompted a lot of talk about “reputation laundering” as former Trump Administration officials try to distance themselves from the president they served so faithfully – the most notable example: former Attorney General William Barr. 

As America’s racial justice reckoning finally catches up with “child welfare” – or, as it should be called, family policing – the “child welfare establishment is engaged in its own campaign of reputation laundering.  Yet none of the recent trips to the reputation laundry from child welfare establishment groups includes support for any proposal that would reduce their power.  That’s how we know the real goal is to co-opt the rhetoric of change and put it to use maintaining the oppressive status quo.  Consider the first of three recent examples. 

The Child Welfare League of America 

Faced with demands to stop confusing poverty with neglect, end the misuse and overuse of foster care and purge the system of racial bias, longtime CWLA President Christine James-Brown declares: “The field is ready, hungry for this type of change.” 

But CWLA is “the field.”  CWLA could have had the system it claims to hunger for at any time because CWLA and its members have all the power.  CWLA’s agencies not only built the system we have now, they – and CWLA itself – spent decades fighting against the change for which Ms. James-Brown claims to hunger.  

● CWLA opposed real child welfare finance reform – not the tokenism of the Family First Act but the kind in which states would be free to take their vast foster-care entitlement funding as a flexible flat grant and use the money for better alternatives.  Even when the proposal was strictly voluntary -- an option for states that wanted it -- CWLA opposed it. 

● In fact CWLA went further, calling for a change in a complex funding formula that would have the effect of more than doubling federal foster care spending.  

● CWLA even opposed legislation that would stop member agencies from swiping foster youth’s social security benefits! 

But now they want us to believe that all along they’ve been hungry for change? 

In a 2006 publication, CWLA declared: 

It is often said that the nation’s foster care and child welfare system is ‘broken.’ In reality, it isn’t broken so much as it has never been fully supported and empowered to function effectively. 

Sixteen years later, they’ve tweaked the rhetoric, but it’s just old whine in new bottles.  In an echo of that claim from 2006, the chair of CWLA’s board of directors laments that “When something goes wrong, the system is described as ‘broken.'” 

How can you claim to be hungry for change in a system if you can’t even admit it’s broken?   CWLA is hungry only for what it’s always been hungry for: Power. 

What real change looks like 

If CWLA was serious about racial justice, if it was serious about ending the rampant confusion of poverty with neglect, if it was serious about ending a child welfare surveillance state that makes all vulnerable children less safe, they would endorse a due-process and finance reform agenda that includes at a minimum: 

● High-quality defense counsel for all families at risk of being caught in the family police net.

● Real child welfare finance reform – not the tokenism of Family First.

● Repeal of the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act – or at least strong backing for legislation proposed by Rep. Karen Bass that would curb its worst excesses.

● Repeal of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.

● Repeal of mandatory child abuse reporting laws. 

But CWLA and the other groups we will spotlight over the next few days will never go near an agenda like that. 

Because their real message is the same as it’s been for decades: Sure, fund “preventive services” as an add-on – that we get to run of course -- but we must continue to be judge, jury and sometimes family executioner for millions of children, overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite.  We’ll just co-opt your rhetoric and hope you won’t notice. 

Tomorrow: Our next example.

 Read all the posts in this series here.