New Yorker has published an article by Jill Lepore about the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. It is horrifying when you find out what your neighbors are capable of, especially when they’re under the influence of alcohol and illegal drugs.
Other than trying to build a country with a better class of citizens/residents, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to stop child abuse. The author implies that the agency suffers from a lack of funding, but the Tax Foundation says that “Massachusetts’s 2011 tax burden of 10.3% ranks 11th highest out of 50 states, and is above the national average of 9.8%.” We’re a comparatively rich state (albeit poor compared to Singapore and other stars) and we’re more thoroughly taxed than other states so presumably DCF is at least as well funded as analogous agencies in other states.
Does Massachusetts DCF have a higher caseload than agencies in other states? Poverty and child abuse are positively correlated (see this paper from Wisconsin and this paper from NBER). Massachusetts has a lower-than-average poverty rate compared to other states (list), which would point toward less work for DCF. On the other hand, Massachusetts has perhaps the most lucrative child support system in the world and it is a standard litigation tactic for a child support plaintiff to report a defendant as a child molester everywhere in the U.S. that child support is substantially profitable. Examples:
“Best case for the mom is when dad is a child molester,” said a Massachusetts attorney, “which is why reports to DCF are so popular. But realistically nearly every guy worth suing could have started his own day care center if he actually had wanted to engage in funny business with children. So it is tough to cut the father back to less than every other weekend.”
So the mother could save herself $24,000 per year as well as enjoy more time with the kids if she could obtain sole custody? “Yes.” What would it take for her to overcome [Alaska’s] statutory 50/50 presumption? “It would have been tough until about 7 years ago. Then a well-meaning legislator added a statutory exception. If a litigant can establish that she has been physically abused or the children have been sexually abused then she can obtain sole custody.” Why does Sullivan say “she”? “I have never seen a man try this.” How about women? “Either there has been an epidemic of abuse in Alaska since this statute was amended or a lot of women are lying. In about 25 percent of the cases now the man is alleged to be a physical or sexual abuser.” What kind of evidence does a woman need to prove that she or her children were abused? “Nothing beyond her word. The judge is able to find that her own testimony is credible. However, there is a trend toward skepticism. Judges can’t help but notice the increase in allegations of physical and sexual abuse.”
All of our [Colorado] interviewees agreed that domestic violence is a common theme when people are trying to get a house, the children, and the cash. “Certainly in contested cases there is almost always an allegation that somebody is abusive,” said Ciancio, “though only very seldom is the abuse provable even to the 51-percent standard.” Are there any penalties for making false allegations? “You can get at least one free abuse allegation if you work through a pediatrician, therapist, or other mandatory reporter,” said Ciancio. “I see some type of abuse or domestic abuse allegation in 3 out of 4 cases that are filed,” said Eckelberry. “Most people alleging abuse back off before trial, but it is an effective tactic. There are attorneys who in every case they file will also file a domestic abuse protection order.” Gushurst pointed out that it is ironic that people file custody lawsuits supposedly because they are so passionate about protecting a child from abuse: “The most damaging aspect of divorce is the litigated conflict. Psychologists have found that it is even more damaging than sexual abuse.”
Regarding the question of whether this is a popular litigation tactic for Massachusetts plaintiffs, a DCF social worker volunteered “Oh, they all do that.” So the greater intensity of custody litigation in Massachusetts compared to other states would tend to increase DCF’s caseload.
It seems hard to argue with Lepore’s statement that “Programs for the poor are poor programs.” DCF has a budget of approximately $827 million per year (source). Lepore’s article says that “the number of children in the care of the sate” is 9200. The funding is thus close to $90,000 per child in state care. I think that includes foster care, for which the state actually pays out approximately $8,500 per year (source; note that the top of the child support guidelines is $40,000/year when suing someone earning $250,000/year and therefore it is more lucrative to take care of one’s own child than a foster child (judges routinely extrapolate beyond the top of the guidelines when a higher-income defendant can be found)). So maybe they are “poor programs” but this doesn’t seem like “poorly funded,” even if DCF is distracted to some extent by the flurry of reports from cash-motivated child support plaintiffs.
What about a radical change to welfare? Currently Massachusetts gives welfare families a private apartment or house in which they can do whatever they want. According to the article, sometimes “whatever they want” for Massachusetts welfare recipients includes consuming heroin and beating children to death. What about a communal living situation instead? Welfare recipients would get private bedrooms but meals could be cooked and consumed communally, like at an old-style Israeli Kibbutz. This way neighbors would have an opportunity to see children several times per day and perhaps to intervene before abuse turned fatal. What do readers think of this idea?
Communal living with other wretched refuse opens the doors to additional cross-family sexual abuse (which is way more common than parent-on-kid), but since your typical mentally ill and/or dumb single man won’t be placed in those houses, I guess on net it sounds like a good way to keep eyes on child neglect. For an even more reliable way, consider reality TV (crowdfunded? a fraction of the usual grifters have figured out how to spin fairy stories for crowdfunding websites e.g. they raped me and gave me AIDS, help!)
Government bureaucrats in agencies like this routinely harass the innocent and coddle the guilty. The short explanation is that there is no incentive to hire people with any intelligence, competence, or empathy. The only way to solve the problem is to change the incentives. One advantage of a constitutional absolute monarchy, where ordinary laws are legislated as usual but the monarch, and only the monarch, has the personal authority to go around the system and punish and reward people arbitrarily, is that this kind of systemic problem can be quickly improved by “making an example of” all the responsible people, including incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats.
Perjury is apparently no big deal these days. I’ve heard the same since the mid-90s, with dads being imprisoned as child abusers, testimony later recanted while dad in prison, etc. But it seems to be the expected thing now. Can’t the dad sue for slander or something?
Communal living: perhaps, but I wouldn’t rely on welfare cases to police welfare cases in the long term. Presumably many of them are drug addicts and pretty detached in the first place. I have no good solution to this, I’m afraid.
Yes, there is no accountability for perjury. A woman who, egged on by a lawyer, makes a false allegation of child abuse against her husband in order to obtain a better divorce, should, along with the lawyer, be jailed for long enough that the child will be grown by the time she gets out.
The agency used to be called CPS. Based on many stories of CPS harassing innocent parents, I think that it gets at least 10x too much funding.
@ Joe Shipman #4 – good luck trying to pin down perjury on a lying plaintiff’s lawyer, who only advised the client on possible course of actions, and in all probability has ready minutes to prove it. S/he could not have known that the client lied, had ulterior motives, or was guided by anything other than, and above that of her child’s welfare… these admonitions also prominent in the minutes.
The system is rigged against the accused/ defendants/ fathers to such a degree that it’s a wonder that any subsequently by fiat “half-orphaned” so raised children—meal tickets to gold-digging mothers and lawyers—grow up with their mental facilities intact. Or maybe, once mature, these adults half-consciously elect to live in perpetual denial, in effect allow the fantasy of their upbringing to continue. Because it’s the easier way to conduct their own (seldom easy) life… the missing parent having been estranged way back has little prospect of ever mattering in these individuals’ grown-up life anyway.
While I don’t have anything to add to that quoted Mass., DCF story (formerly the Child Protection Services in the USA?), I recall several other harrowing tales with “institutionalized protection of children” at their center, enclosed below [pretty long, and of the Janet Malcolm 3-part NYRB essay only the first one is posted in full online]:
#1:3 What happened to Michelle in Forest Hills? by Janet Malcolm 22 Nov 2012
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/22/what-happened-michelle-forest-hills/?pagination=false
#2:3 The Fate of Michelle Malakova: ‘Oppositional Behavior’ by Janet Malcolm Dec 6, 2012
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/06/fate-michelle-malakova-oppositional-behavior/?pagination=false
Michelle: Surviving in a Fixed World
Janet Malcolm Dec 20, 2012
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/20/michelle-surviving-fixed-world/?pagination=false
[2013] Rachel Aviv
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/02/where-is-your-mother
[2015] Elisabeth Weil
https://medium.com/matter/what-really-happened-to-baby-johan-88816c9c7ff5
Tom, Joe: The “perjury” idea doesn’t make sense. A properly coached plaintiff will not drop a dime on the defendant. The properly coached plaintiff will express a concern to a pediatrician, teacher, or other person required to report to DCF. It might be “Little Barbara is always touching herself ‘down there’ after visits with [the defendant]”. Then the pediatrician reports that to DCF and the investigation starts. The plaintiff can truthfully deny having initiated a DCF report. Is it perjury to believe that a child is touching herself? To have a sincerely expressed concern?
Joe: It is not necessarily a lawyer who suggests this strategy. According to our interviewees, it is often an already-successful plaintiff who coaches the new plaintiff, perhaps a relative or neighbor. The lawyers typically say that they themselves discourage generate false child abuse reports, though they also say that some of their colleagues encourage them.
Phil, is it first of all true that little Barbara is always touching herself after visiting dad? Technically, I suppose lying about it to the DCF would not be perjury since it’s not testimony in court. (I assume the dad is not allowed to defend himself from these possibly baseless accusations in court. Otherwise it seems clear how to proceed.)
Perhaps the lawyer should be required by law to explicitly inform the plaintiff that perjury is a crime punishable by this and that. The court probably should clearly say this at the beginning of proceedings too, simply to set the tone. Such measures of course still rely on some form of decency among the involved, which, given the topic, may be lacking.
Tom: Here’s how it goes…
Pediatrician: Do you have any other concerns today?
Plaintiff: Well, I think maybe little Barbara touches herself after she comes back from spending the weekend with [defendant].
Pediatrician: Are you sure?
Plaintiff: Not 100%, but I think she does behave differently and I am concerned.
———–
After a thorough taxpayer-funded investigation that comes up negative the plaintiff can always say “Well, perhaps I was mistaken.” That a defendant was investigated by DCF, however, could carry some weight with a judge. If that results in the child spending more time with the plaintiff, that is explicitly a reason for the plaintiff to earn higher child support profits.
So the dad should make similar vague claims of potential child abuse by the mother to even the field in the easiest way. Now we have found a socially worse equilibrium.
Or perhaps the DCF or courts should by default seal such records where investigations led to nothing, since the potential for harm and mistaken rulings seems great. Not to mention that it’s a practical problem from what I understand.
Well, I think I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure you’ll agree there’s not much point in proposing solutions at this point.
Tom, that’s exactly what I wanted to ask Phil about: in your Real World Divorce research did you come across any fathers who preemptively, or “preventively” pulled the same kind of… trick, empty child-abuse accusations, on their soon-to-be-ex-spouses? Such sufficiently grave to lead to CPS/DCF investigations, and from then on to influencing the outcome of the divorce/ child support cases?
I remember once watching a (possibly made for TV/ Hallmark Channel?) movie about divorced parents, where the ex-husband reported to the court [possibly NY, as there was the Brooklyn Bridge in the background], that his ex-wife’s live-in lover parades naked in front of their 4yo daughter, etc. Which led to mother being stripped off, and himself awarded sole custody of the girl… the rest of that obnoxiously pedagogic movie dealing with how the [audience sympathy vote winner] mother had to adapt, to come to terms with the harsh custody outcome… every second weekend in the park, etc. Nothing as intricate as the parental acrimony in “Kramer vs. Kramer” (where Meryl Streep regained custody by default of being the mother in spite of her previously half-abandoning the kid). I’m pretty sure that in the movie I saw then still middle-aged Paul Dooley played the sanctimonious denouncing father, while Diane Keaton could have been the mother; only searching for the combo leads nowhere, and no film title of either actor (his 188; her 64) stands out.
ianf: The lawyers whom we interviewed said that claiming abuse is generally a woman’s prerogative and strategy. However, any plaintiff anxious to get maximum cash could work this angle. There doesn’t seem to be a practical downside. What lawyers did tell us is that there is a much smaller percentage of men in the U.S. population who are eager to live off a former spouse compared to women. Thus even when the wife was the higher-earning partner, a lot of men won’t seek the alimony to which they could be entitled under the law. (It is “could be entitled” because, in every U.S. state to at least some extent, everything is subject to the personal prejudice and/or whim of the judge who hears the case.)
Phil, I take it that you meant to write “claiming abuse is generally women’s tactic and strategy,” rather than their prerogative. Also, the straight answer to my question has to be “no, the lawyers we interviewed reported no such fake accusations of sexual child abuse posed by fathers in the course of divorce, etc proceedings” (or holler if I’m reading too much out of your non-answer, which btw dealt exclusively with financial eviscerations/rewards of such cases).
What interests me more, however, is IF-AND-WHY more fathers do not fight for the custody of the children, even using the same dirty tactics as the mothers. Because, if the jurisprudence, legal customs, and statistics tell them they’ll end up footing the bill anyway, they could just as well make sure that they themselves are in charge. If the gold digging mother can petition for and receive extra tax-free funds for a live-in nanny to take care of the kid, then, surely, they could manage that as well, and gain plenty of “quality time” with the child as a bonus. After all, and that’s an argument difficult to undermine in any court of law, should anything tragic happen to the customary first-caretaker-mother, the father would then automatically be expected to provide the parenting function to their kid. (Else he’s just chopped liver with a wallet).
So, if these mothers then knew that they could be defeated in court, lose not only the kid, but also their not inconsiderable meal ticket (with the loss of their place in the lunching ladies’ pecking order the horror the horror!), they’d soon learn to reconsider using the offspring as both a shield, a club, and asset of contention.