One did as a matter of fact - I came running into the living room, before I was 3 years old, and tripped. As I fell, I hit my face on the edge of a glass coffee table, cutting open my face below and above my eye.  When rushed off to casualty by our guest who verified the story my parents told the doctors, I was not allowed home and instead placed into emergency foster care.  Their view was that I had been hit and my face cut by a ring.  Fortunately I was allowed back home within a few days although remained registered as at risk.

Unfortunately, when I was older and family circumstances changed, I was subject to willful neglect and domestic violence. Absolutely nobody picked up on the signs and social services failed to protect me (remember that I was still on the register).

It has always felt like one extreme or the other - where accidents have happened, social services over-react and people's lives are ruined. Where there is genuine cause for concern, social services don't intervene and we end up with dead children in the headlines.

During his life he never was able to form a proper attachment to women. He never managed to recover from the first 18 months of life.

My wife's family was desperately hoping that he would be gay. Unfortunately that did not happen. Even though his father is a pacifist he repeatedly expressed hope that his son would join the military - some form of structure that would help him function in society. That too, did not come to pass.

We buried him a few years back. He died of a heroin overdose.

If you are a bad parent, so are my mother and father. At age three I was found by police quite some distance form home wandering through an uncompleted building complete with open elevator shafts.

With the woman you talk about, I hope that great care is taken. I hope that they are able to show compassion and wisdom. I hope that they understand that everything they do is harming the child - and will temper what they do not on the side of justice, but on the side of care for that child. The rules over smoking (I am a very militant anti smoker) make it sound like they may have partially lost their way.

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}

I often think how all of us teeter on that knife edge, and how just one little lapse - one moment's inattention - with children, in the kitchen, at the wheel - and a child is lost, a loved one hurt, a stranger killed. Who can ever be as vigilant as we all need to be in this life?

For this poor woman, prison would not be the worst thing; the worst thing has already happened to her.

And there is no guarantee that it won't happen to us as well: the briefest moment of inattention - on our own part, the part of someone we love, or even a complete stranger - can make it all go away.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

My mother also fell down a chair with my sister and let me fall from a tram when we were babies. Those could have turned out worse, too.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

The law is so cut and dry, so totally unemotional, it can be inhumane, it can mark lives forever and never find anything resembling balance.  I´m really glad this family has you working for some equilibrium, some sense,...

Most all of us have been really ´lucky´ as children and as parents, haven´t we!

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.

There is a myth that you can and should provide a totally safe environment at all times and that someone has to be at fault for every accident - probably perpetrated by our legal systems and compensation cultures.  Life isn't always safe.  Accidents will happen, and whilst many can be prevented, that is not always possible.  Imprisoning parents does more damage to a child's development that all but serious neglect and of course abuse.

It is very very difficult to get the balance right between protecting and harming a child by blaming the parents.  Techniques for detecting willful harm and abuse are anything but fool proof.  But fostering children is almost always harmful - especially as most fostering is short term and children are passed on and on.

The presumption of innocence has to favour parents unless really significant evidence emerges.  Otherwise far more children are hurt by the process rather than saved from abuse.


Index of Frank's Diaries

I mean, I obviously have no clue what truly happened to the child.  How could I possibly know?  But in cases of abuse, it is not uncommon for partners who are being abused (any form) to deny that their children have been abused.  It sounds unconscionable, but is not unusual.  Of course, it may very well be an accident.  And who would not want to believe that?  Who could intentionally harm their own child?!  And those who have, surely are monsters, with tell-tale signs of monsterdom : lack of remorse, lack feelings, anti-social behavior.  No one who believed they loved their child could hurt their child, right?  ...Er, wrong.

I have no children, but have done a lot of baby-sitting, and totally sympathize with the kinds of close-calls your describe.  

I am just saying, on the one hand, we give parents the benefit of the doubt because ... who are we to judge? what if we are wrong and ruin someone's life in the process?  etc.  But adults can advocate for themselves, whereas children can't and have infinite reasons not to.  

Not all people who have done terrible things have "Bad Person" stamped on their heads.  

This is a truly tragic story.  I guess I am a bit more ambivalent about the situation, taken in whole.  

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

This heart-wrenching story brought back so many things. So many hurts and forgotten tragedies. I can't thank you enough.

As a U.S. Certified Court Interpreter for the State  of Florida, I had the opportunity to see these sort of trials on a regular basis. I interpreted for years for the legal system that dealt out "justice" to the indigent, illiterate, mentally-ill, disillusioned, and mostly invisible segment of society. Those whom we notice only as a headline or statistic. Often, their court appearances were brief and my level of involvement almost none at all- traffic violations, shop-lifting charges, you know, nothing too dramatic. One day, though, I was handed the docket for a murder trial that would last a few weeks at least.

It was a case of a young, educated Puerto-Rican man who had been living in Florida for five years and had no previous criminal record. He was charged with first-degree man-slaughter after he backed his 18-wheeler into a loading dock and killed a fellow worker. The "victim" was an 18 year-old who was hired by the company as an ex-parolee and was doing community service instead of a fourth jail sentence. He had no family, other than his grandparents, no friends, was rehabilitating from long-term drug use and had actually left a suicide letter in his locker. "Our" defendant had a future, a wife and young baby and everything to lose. Was it an accident? Of course it was, and it was to change his life forever. The conviction would get him jail time, the wonderful education that only inmates can get in reduced spaces of jail confinement and bring his world crashing around him and his family.

Needless to say, I became pretty emotional about the case. In discussing it with a veteran interpreter,I asked her how she coped with these cases and how she managed to keep her sanity after so many years. She gave me some words of wisdom.
"Don't worry", she said, "after a while you'll just treat him like a memory before going on to your next assignment. It won't hurt at all. You just learn to not get involved."

I knew right then that I had to get out of that job, because if I succeeded in getting past the involvement stage, then I would have no feelings left.

Thank you for caring, and for sharing this story. It really touched me. In the end, "caring" is why we live.

Ivonne Miller

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

If the criminal justice system were "just", that incident probably wouldn't have happened. Yet, as you read in Ivonne's comment, in order to survive in the "system", we must learn to ---not feel. Yet--without feelings, we can't fix it, because people who do not feel are not interested in "justice"--it does not concern them, beyond it's utility as a gateway to the human warehouse.

Thank you. Keep it up, please.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.