Make them prove abuse
- Details
- Category: Uncategorised
- Created: Wednesday, 06 April 2016 23:20
- Written by Linda Downs - Help fighting CPS in court
It is very common for social workers to promulgate a mud-slinging campaign against you by filling the petition with irrelevant information. You should continually require them to show the court how their allegations are connected to abuse.
As an example, the state might put in the petition that the parent's watch x-rated movies.
While some people might find this distasteful, it has nothing to do with abuse or neglect. Thus, your task would be to require them to connect the alleged movie-watching to abuse or remove It from the complaint. You'd ask things like, “Are you alleging that the children were neglected or abused as a result of the movie watching?” and “Are you alleging that the children were unattended while the parents watched x-rated movies?” “How exactly are you connecting the watching of x-rated movies to the alleged abuse or neglect?”
Another common accusation is that of spanking. The state will say that you regularly spank your child or that you use an instrument to administer corporal punishment, but won't allege any injuries from the spankings.
Your focus would be on whether or not regular spanking or spanking with an instrument amounts to abuse. Again, you'd ask them to show you what law states spankings without injury are abuse? You needn't bother admitting or denying the spankings at this point because it hasn't been established that they would be abuse.
The temptation is to jump in and defend against the mud-slinging; to say that you don't watch x-rated movies or that you use time-outs rather than spanking. However, this will lead you down a path of ridiculous, unrelated accusations and equally ridiculous defenses.
In the end it will burn up all your energy and bring out all your faults that have nothing to do with child abuse or neglect.
It will also give the state things to use against you. As an example, you might admit that you do spank your child with an instrument but only as a last resort and have never left a bruise.
The state will later say something like, “The parents admit to hitting their child with an object but are in denial about it's negative effects.”
Social workers are notorious for twisting words and leaving out pertinent facts. The fewer words you give them to twist, the better off you'll be. Here is an example:
Social Worker: Does your husband have an anger management problem?
Mother: No.
Social Worker: Well does he get angry?
Mother: Of course he gets angry, everyone gets angry.
The worker wrote in her report:
Mother reports her husband gets angry and views this as normal behavior. Is this what the mother said? Yes! Is it what the mother meant? No! Will the Judge get the wrong idea from this report? Yes! The worker is implying that the mother knows her husband is a threat but refuses to do anything about it. She's setting the mother up to be accused of failure to protect. The mother shouldn't have been discussing her husband's anger with the social worker before the worker had drawn a clear line between the alleged anger and the alleged abuse or neglect. And that discussion would've taken place in a courtroom on the record rather than in a social worker's office.
The mother's response to this allegation should be, “While not confirming the accusation, the defendant asserts that the presence of anger doesn't meet the statutory definition of child abuse or neglect.”
You should first ask yourself, “Does this meet the statutory definition of abuse?” If it doesn't, you needn't bother defending it. Rather, shift the focus back to the state by requiring them to make that connection. The mother could take time to explain the whole conversation and the intent of her statements, but this would take the focus off the true legal argument and create a situation where the worker's credibility might be weighed against her own (their word against yours). The point you want the Judge to see is that the state has failed to meet it's burden of proof. There is no issue of credibility because even if the accusations were true, they don't amount to abuse. If there's no allegation of abuse or neglect, the state has no jurisdiction.
