Another Story Involving Latter-day Saints and Abuse ... But This One Isn't What You Think

[Kenngo1969]

Laura Ingraham had the couple featured in this account, whose children were removed from their home after the parents were suspected of abusing them, on her show tonight.  (You're entitled to whatever opinion you hold regarding Ms. Ingram.  Let's not go down that rabbit hole.  This story transcends politics.  There are reasons good and sound for people across the political spectrum to be concerned about it.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/07/josh-sabey-sarah-perkins-abuse-investigation/

Members of the family are Latter-day Saints.

• Do you have any experience, from whatever angle, with child welfare?
• What is your opinion of the system and of how it functions?
• What is your opinion of the standards that allow child welfare officials to remove children from homes?  Are these standards too vague?  Are they too subjective? Is too much room left for individual interpretation?
• Other thoughts?

[Tacenda]

16 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Laura Ingraham had the couple featured in this account, whose children were removed from their home after the parents were suspected of abusing them, on her show tonight.  (You're entitled to whatever opinion you hold regarding Ms. Ingram.  Let's not go down that rabbit hole.  This story transcends politics.  There are reasons good and sound for people across the political spectrum to be concerned about it.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/07/josh-sabey-sarah-perkins-abuse-investigation/

Members of the family are Latter-day Saints.

• Do you have any experience, from whatever angle, with child welfare?
• What is your opinion of the system and of how it functions?
• What is your opinion of the standards that allow child welfare officials to remove children from homes?  Are these standards too vague?  Are they too subjective? Is too much room left for individual interpretation?
• Other thoughts?

I felt anxiousness and was sickened when listening to their child crying, horrible! If there was no concrete evidence of abuse, if CPS messes up it can hurt a family in so many ways, which happens a lot from what I've learned. http://tucollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Trauma-The-Impact-of-Removing-Children-from-the-Home.pdf

Edited December 10, 2022 by Tacenda

[Kenngo1969]

9 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I felt anxiousness and was sickened when listening to their child crying, horrible! If there was no concrete evidence of abuse, if CPS messes up it can hurt a family in so many ways, which happens a lot from what I've learned. http://tucollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Trauma-The-Impact-of-Removing-Children-from-the-Home.pdf

Cain't give you rep points, Alas!, but, +1.  

[supersc]

This will indeed be investigated further.  Fathers of both of the interviewed parents are lawyers, and Josh Sabey is a filmaker, having a couple of acclaimed documentaries under his belt.

This has been an ordeal for all the families and children involved.  What wasn't covered in the Ingrahm piece was that Sister Perkins parents were given temporary custody until the parents were given vack full custody.  At least that is how I remember hearing it from a set of grandparents.

Crazy how much power the DCF in Massachusetts wields.

Personally surprised to see this on Fox... it was earlier covered by the Washington Post and Reason magazine... 3 different spectrums of politics... goes to show you families and their children and perception of parental rights vs. state control transcends politics.

[supersc]

Josh Sabey directed documentaries are thoughtful to say the least:

American Tragedy (2020) is a thoughtful and tactful discussion on the tragedy of the Columbine Colorado mass school shooting, with extensive interviews with the mother of one of the shooters.

https://www.amazon.com/American-Tragedy-Lisa-Sabey/dp/B087SM56WP

 

Going Sane (2017) looks at mental health issues 

https://filmfreeway.com/goingsane

 

The Abortion Talks (current) is a serious attempt to listen to both sides of this divisive national issue.

https://whatisessential.org/the-abortion-talks

Both Sarah Perkins and Josh Sabey are thoughtful and measured... and not afraid to tackle difficult discussion topics.

Now they have their next, own real-life topic handed to them, albeit at a high personal cost.  

 

 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, supersc said:

What wasn't covered in the Ingrahm piece was that Sister Perkins parents were given temporary custody until the parents were given vack full custody.  At least that is how I remember hearing it from a set of grandparents.

It’s mentioned in the link above.  Posted the previous and following paragraphs as they interested me…

Quote

Neither parent had an explanation, but Cal’s grandmother did: When Lisa Sabey learned of Cal’s injury, she remembered an afternoon when she was babysitting her grandsons, and had lifted Cal from his carseat. His head began to roll back, and she grasped him tightly. She recalls that he shrieked — but he was quickly consoled, she says, and she didn’t think to mention anything to his parents at the time. She later provided an affidavit attesting to the episode, supported by a pediatric radiologist who also submitted an affidavit stating that the incident was a probable explanation for Cal’s injury. But a full investigation was already underway.

Somewhat ironically, it was Lisa Sabey and her husband, Mark, who assumed custody of the boys after they were taken away from their parents in the middle of the night. After 16 hours in foster care, the family was able to get the grandparents, who had flown in from Colorado, approved to take the children. On July 16, Clarence and Cal joined their grandparents in the basement apartment of a nearby family friend’s home in Waltham, and on July 18, the family was able to secure daily visitation and nursing access for Perkins and Sabey. It wasn’t until an Aug. 10 hearing that the parents were granted permission to take their boys home under a conditional custody arrangement.

As distressing as this was, they say, they know they were more fortunate than most.

“It’s normally a year before parents are united with their kids. I remember reading that, and going outside to my car and just sobbing,” Perkins says. “My dad came out, and hugged me, and I said, ‘Cal’s going to learn to walk before I see him again.’ And thankfully that didn’t happen for us, but it’s what happens for most people.”

 

Edited December 10, 2022 by Calm

[Kenngo1969]

@supersc +1 for your contributions here.  Hurry up and get 25 posts so I can give you genuine upvotes!  

Thanks,

-Ken

[Kenngo1969]

1 hour ago, supersc said:

... Personally surprised to see this on Fox... it was earlier covered by the Washington Post and Reason magazine... 3 different spectrums of politics... goes to show you families and their children and perception of parental rights vs. state control transcends politics.

As I said earlier:

Quote

This story transcends politics.  There are reasons good and sound for people across the political spectrum to be concerned about it.

I don't want to turn this into a political thread, but, "The State always is, or usually is, right" is not, in my opinion and experience, a conservative position (if that's what you were thinking).

Edited December 10, 2022 by Kenngo1969

[The Nehor]

This case is weird. I could be way off because all my experience is in another state and things vary but someone screwed up.

Generally speaking there isn’t a child removal on a first “offense” leading to an investigation unless the offense is pretty egregious and usually blatantly obvious abuse. Most removals occur after multiple reports.

Reading what they say in the reports it looks like the case worker was either green or really overly suspicious. I have taken visitation notes and things like that and they were jumping to a lot of conclusions. If I had to guess those notes are what led them to take the kids. I am not familiar with Massachusetts law but Texas law has similar emergency removal provisions but they are for situations where the home is known to be an imminent danger. This seizure probably wouldn’t have fit in there.

Getting them to the grandparents was pretty timely. In Texas law parents can, when the kids are removed, designate someone to take the children. If they don’t you usually have to do a home check before the kids can be placed with other family or fictive kin. I have done those assessments. They aren’t difficult to pass but they do take time. In a rush you can get it done in a week. I would move move heaven and earth when I could to rush that process. Kids being stuck in foster care when they have grandparents or siblings or uncles/aunts to take them in is not good. Even in the best foster homes that is not psychologically healthy for the kids.

I’m a little confused on the court dates. They said there was 72 hours (in Texas I think it is within a week) to have the court hearing but then the hearing where the kids were returned was later then that. 99% of the time that first hearing is an easy win for the state. Some parents don’t even try to contest it and many, quite bluntly, shouldn’t. I am guessing that is when things started faltering. I don’t think the judge was happy with the removal. This is where the lawyer for the parents being well-informed probably helped. Visitation was granted absurdly fast. If it wasn’t supervised visitation then super absurdly fast. It might be different there of course. They didn’t mention any family unification plans or the like and Sarah talks about hearing afterwards that it could be up to a year. That is the kind of thing talked about by the judge very quickly if the removal is legally cleared. I don’t remember if those were closed door hearings in Texas. Most family court business is open session outside of a few kinds of adversarial hearings. I would sometimes go early to hearings where I would testify to hear other cases and get a better grasp of how various kinds of cases worked.

In one of the articles I read there were suggestions that a warrant or review panel should be in place. Good-intentioned but I doubt it would have changed this story much. The judge can really only go on what the agency sends them and the same with a review panel.

Going off a tangent the usual removal duration if the children are fully legally removed is 12 months. At that point you reunify the family, place the children with other family or fictive kin, or kids are made eligible for adoption. There is one other horrible limbo kids can get in where they aren’t returned to parents but parental right aren’t terminated but this is rare and means somebody screwed up really bad. In rare cases a judge can bump it to 18 months. Superstar parents who do everything right can get kids back in 5 to 6 months. Most approach the 12 month mark.

The 12 month limit was put in place only a few decades back. I think it was in the late 90s but I might be misremembering. Before then kids in the system were returned at the discretion of the judge with no real time limit. Kids could spend 5-10 years or more visiting parents but stuck in limbo. One problem was that there was a very perverse incentive system in place where the state got federal money for each child in foster care so there was an incentive not to return children. It wasn’t so bad that they were deliberately never returning kids to fit parents but it did mean that they waited a long time to be sure. Congress got sick of these reports and either to keep the states from getting so much money or possibly to help the children followed the recommendations of experts and gave them a year to make a decision either way. I am told it was a massive freakout with caseworkers insisting that this was impossible.

So yeah, it might have been a year but it looks like the state’s case fell apart.

This is very hypothetical but my guess would be that grandma talking about the incident that might have caused the injury was a huge relief to the state. They could now say that explains the damage we saw, the removal was justified out of caution but now that it is explained the kids can go home.

One part of some of the articles I looked at that rubbed me the wrong way was the suggestion that doctors have secret agreements to call in child protection and law enforcement if they suspect abuse. That is pretty standard and even well-known to be the case. The idea that that part is sinister is pretty silly.

This was a screw up but thankfully it was a minor one. I am glad they could deal with it. They were able to secure a lawyer and had some idea how to fight. Many in these situations don’t have the ability, time, or resources to fight if the state gets it wrong.

My guess is that unless whatever they call the higher up in their version of CPS was a complete idiot that the report from the hospital interview and observation was overdramatized. Somehow that report convinced someone that one or both parents were a direct threat to the child suffering serious injury or death. I almost wish I could read the whole case file but then I remember how obscenely long those things are. Someone is probably getting fired.

I agree that we are too likely to accept an agency’s report, a police report, and the like at face value. We trust authority too much. If I am honest I will generally trust a caseworker over a cop but neither should be assumed trustworthy. I only worked with one caseworker I didn’t trust but thankfully she was moved off the case I was on. I thought I was going to have to make an opposed recommendation but the new caseworker was sane and we got the kids home.

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I felt anxiousness and was sickened when listening to their child crying, horrible! If there was no concrete evidence of abuse, if CPS messes up it can hurt a family in so many ways, which happens a lot from what I've learned. http://tucollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Trauma-The-Impact-of-Removing-Children-from-the-Home.pdf

One of the horrifying reports that was used to convince Congress to cut down foster care duration was the realization that statistically kids had similar or marginally better outcomes when staying in an abusive home than they did in foster care.

This is one of the videos they had me watch in their training. It is the least terrible one. These children are a composite of a number of then adults raised in foster care who told their stories. Part 1 & 2 are a little girl, part 3 is a little boy. And yep, still makes me cry.

Don’t watch unless you want to be depressed.

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

4 hours ago, The Nehor said:

One of the horrifying reports that was used to convince Congress to cut down foster care duration was the realization that statistically kids had similar or marginally better outcomes when staying in an abusive home than they did in foster care.

Similar data are now coming out of the UK, with adults who spent time in out-of-home care having worse physical health, reduced life expectancy, higher occurrence of poor mental health, and lower participation rates in both education and employment than adults who, as kids, experienced abuse and/or neglect but remained with their birth parents.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan

[MrShorty]

When I have taken youth protection training from BSA and the church, one of the principles I recall these teaching is that it is not my place to judge whether my suspicions are truly abuse or not. Those (usually DCFS type of law enforcement agencies) are the ones properly trained to determine what is and is not abuse.

Then there are stories like this. They show up in the news media from time to time. The real problem for me with these news stories is that the suggest that DCFS type of law enforcement agencies sometimes misidentify abuse, and that misidentification is itself a very real problem. At times, when I reflect on my YP training, I find myself wondering if there would ever be a time I would hesitate to report abuse because I do not trust the DCFS type of law enforcement to correctly investigate the situation.

@The Nehor seems to be more familiar than most with the inner workings of DCFS type of law enforcement agencies, so perhaps they could provide some sense of how trustworthy the system (even if it clearly makes these kinds of mistakes from time to time) really is. It seems to me that the system needs to be able to walk the tightrope between "identifying abusive situation and protect the victims" and "identifying situations that are not abuse". Obviously, I have no expertise in knowing how to walk that tightrope, so I cannot comment on this or other cases in any intelligent way. I hope that those involved in DCFS type of law enforcement are cognizant of the difficulties of walking that tightrope and actively seeking to understand how to optimize identifying abuse without too many false positives or false negatives.

I think if I suspected abuse, this would be the last hurdle I would need to get over in order to report my suspicions. That concerns me.

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Similar data are now coming out of the UK, with adults who spent time in out-of-home care having worse physical health, reduced life expectancy, higher occurrence of poor mental health, and lower participation rates in both education and employment than adults who, as kids, experienced abuse and/or neglect but remained with their birth parents.

In the system this damage is often mitigated to an extent by placing the kids with other family or fictive kin (non-blood relatives with close ties with family). Not all cases have this option though.

Edited December 10, 2022 by The Nehor

[The Nehor]

9 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

When I have taken youth protection training from BSA and the church, one of the principles I recall these teaching is that it is not my place to judge whether my suspicions are truly abuse or not. Those (usually DCFS type of law enforcement agencies) are the ones properly trained to determine what is and is not abuse.

Then there are stories like this. They show up in the news media from time to time. The real problem for me with these news stories is that the suggest that DCFS type of law enforcement agencies sometimes misidentify abuse, and that misidentification is itself a very real problem. At times, when I reflect on my YP training, I find myself wondering if there would ever be a time I would hesitate to report abuse because I do not trust the DCFS type of law enforcement to correctly investigate the situation.

@The Nehor seems to be more familiar than most with the inner workings of DCFS type of law enforcement agencies, so perhaps they could provide some sense of how trustworthy the system (even if it clearly makes these kinds of mistakes from time to time) really is. It seems to me that the system needs to be able to walk the tightrope between "identifying abusive situation and protect the victims" and "identifying situations that are not abuse". Obviously, I have no expertise in knowing how to walk that tightrope, so I cannot comment on this or other cases in any intelligent way. I hope that those involved in DCFS type of law enforcement are cognizant of the difficulties of walking that tightrope and actively seeking to understand how to optimize identifying abuse without too many false positives or false negatives.

I think if I suspected abuse, this would be the last hurdle I would need to get over in order to report my suspicions. That concerns me.

My take is that the system is probably more slanted to not acting when it should than it is to overreaching. There are a couple of reasons for this. CPS agencies are chronically underfunded. Caseworkers usually have in excess of 20 cases at a time. Realistically they should have 5 to 10. The paperwork requirements are extensive. There are visitations to manage, court appearances, parent interviews, and a lot to get done. They tend to have 50-60 hour workweeks. Pay is low for the work required. Burnout rates are high. The emotional impact is high. You get the problem that generally only people who care about kids will take the job but those are the same people who often can’t stay detached enough for their own emotional safety and they don’t last. Veteran caseworkers are not idealists about the system being wonderful for children. If you meet someone who has been a case worker for more than fifteen years you are meeting someone emotionally tough who has seen things and endured. They are tough. They have watched kids they care about move from situation to situation and seen the pain they are enduring from the lack of stability and often can’t do anything to stop it. There can be a sense of powerlessness. Case workers generally only move on cases where the abuse is obvious, there is an ongoing problem reflected by multiple reports, or the situation is egregious because they know resources are limited. That is why this case is a little baffling to me. Caseworkers have no incentive to overreach since more cases mean a bigger workload. 

Although it is getting a little better there is still a strong racial component to results. Minorities fare worse in the system. On top of that the further down the economic ladder you are the worse the results. While I am genuinely glad these parents could fight the system there are abuse cases that die on the vine because the abuser has money and resources to fight when they should be nailed to the wall for what they did. There are other problems right now in the agencies. In Texas right now there is a bit of an exodus from CPS. Our governor in his non-existent wisdom has decided to have CPS waste its time investigating transgender kid’s parents and prioritized those for immediate investigation with deadlines. In practice this means that his political stunt will get priority over investigating actual abuse. A lot of people working there don’t want to be tools of that jackass. Some will tough it out for the kids but even if they stay that is another morale hit.

Sorry for the long reply but in total I would say if you report abuse the odds are better of CPS (or equivalent agency in state) investigating and not finding enough to act on it than it is that they will act in excess. This may vary by state and local agency but that would be my take. Also the case in this thread is one that no one outside of a doctor would ever have to make the call on. It can be horrible to be under investigation. It happened once to my cousin and her son was taken (thankfully just for a week). My brother’s wife was worried that CPS would investigate her for an event with my niece where a caseworker and the police were involved and I assured her that the odds of it were very low and if it happened she would pass with flying colors.

I do get the fear. A federal law enforcement agency just wandered into the periphery of my life this week with something that will probably be nothing and I really hope they catch whoever is responsible for what happened but I am ready to be mentally on guard if questions come. They probably won’t.

[Kenngo1969]

@MrShorty , @The Nehor, & @Hamba Tuhan

I appreciate your perspectives and comments here.

Thanks,

-Ken

Edited December 10, 2022 by Kenngo1969

[supersc]

Heard the paternal grandfather's (stake president) 1st hand account today, over the pulpit, of his family's experiences throughout this ordeal. 

Was an incredible ~40 minute talk about life's adversities and how these experiences help shape us, especially as we learn to rely on others and a higher power.

Near the end, he chuckled how the Massachusetts government agency had poked a mother bear with her cubs.... that Lisa, Sarah, and Josh are experienced documentarians.

I look forward to reading this story in full, some day, watching the sure-to-be documentary, and supporting child health services reform to ensure judicial review prior to extraction of children from parent's homes... except, perhaps, in the most extreme life-or-death or dangerous situations, which this was clearly not from all side's accounts.

[Kenngo1969]

1 hour ago, supersc said:

Heard the paternal grandfather's (stake president) 1st hand account today, over the pulpit, of his family's experiences throughout this ordeal. 

Was an incredible ~40 minute talk about life's adversities and how these experiences help shape us, especially as we learn to rely on others and a higher power.

Near the end, he chuckled how the Massachusetts government agency had poked a mother bear with her cubs.... that Lisa, Sarah, and Josh are experienced documentarians.

I look forward to reading this story in full, some day, watching the sure-to-be documentary, and supporting child health services reform to ensure judicial review prior to extraction of children from parent's homes... except, perhaps, in the most extreme life-or-death or dangerous situations, which this was clearly not from all side's accounts.

+1.  Get 25 posts, so I can upvote you "for real."  

[Kenngo1969]

@smac97

Any comments on this case?

[Danzo]

A long time ago, in the eighties, Child welfare in California raided our home and took my brother away.  I was twelve years old at the time but I still remember the trauma of having to hide from the police because they might take me away.   Overnight the police went from friend to enemy.  To this day my parents and us will not allow a police officer on duty into our house.  (The rookie mistake our parents made was let one officer into the house which then allowed the officer to call the whole swarm). Fortunately for us my brother was returned after a few days, but we found out the hard way the power imbalance the police in all its forms (including Child protective services) can hold over unsuspecting citizens.

As I have grown older, I have observed that what happened to our family was probably a fairly rare mistake.  I see Child welfare more often than not leaving a child in an abusive relationship when the child should be removed more than taking children from innocent parents.  Unfortunately child welfare services has the same problem that police departments in general have, they have a hard time recognizing and admitting to mistakes.   Police officers often cover for each other and CPS is no different.  The huge power these agencies hold over people needs to have checks in place.   

[Kenngo1969]

@Danzo

I'm sorry you, your brother, and your family went through that. 

[Tacenda]

It sure makes it difficult to make a call to the hotline if it may harm a child even more. But they repeatably say to call in even if it's a suspicion. This makes me take pause and causes me to rethink all of this. I have never had to call the hotline thank goodness.

Edited December 13, 2022 by Tacenda