Parents smoke pot while child is asleep. Daughter taken away. Dies in foster care

[liberalhistorian]

49. This pot hysteria has got to stop.

When I was growing up my middle-class professional parents had a lot of middle-class professional friends who smoked pot, including while their children were sleeping, and everything was fine and the children turned out just fine. But there was such hysteria surrounding any pot use or possession that it's a good thing that no one ever mentioned it to anyone in authority (because that's the only way they would ever have found out). Alcohol does far more damage than pot, parents who drink too much do far more damage to their kids physically and emotionally, yet we don't swoop in and take away the children of parents who drink unless they almost kill the children.

When I was living in Cleveland, there was a horrendous case that was similar to this one. An interracial couple (he was black, she was white, and I mention their races because it's believed that racism had a lot to do with what happened and I agree) had a three-year-old son and a newborn baby girl. When she was two months old, they made a mistake that I'm sure they'll now regret for the rest of their lives. They took their daughter to the ER of a certain local but nationally known hospital because they were concerned that she seemed to be in pain. It was discovered that she had many bone fractures and "cracks" and she was immediately taken into the custody of CPS and the parents arrested. Their son was also taken into CPS custody, they couldn't even see him. They kept insisting they hadn't done anything, could never hurt their children. Their son showed no signs whatsoever of any abuse at all.

Their pediatrician swore under oath of an affidavit that they'd been devoted and loving parents to both their children and the doc thought that the baby could have the bone disease that causes bones to be so brittle and fragile that they can fracture and break just in normal, daily life, including picking them up and changing diapers. The doc had seen that disease many times and believed that that was the problem and had seen no other signs of abuse or neglect. The police and CPS and ER docs didn't give a shit what the doc said, they had their script and they were going to follow it. The son was placed in foster care and was dead not one month later because the fucking idiots at CPS had placed him with a woman who was violating the terms of her agreement with CPS by allowing a teenager who had no training, and who had had run-ins with the law, to care for the foster children. She also had too many day-care children, more than legally allowed, and had been cited for that by CPS also. The son was killed by the teenager who wasn't supposed to be there in the first place, let alone caring for the children.

It turned out that the baby did, indeed, have the bone disease that was suspected (I can't remember its name right now) and there were no other signs of abuse or neglect. But CPS dug in and it took another year for them to get their own baby back after CPS killed their son. I believe they finally received a substantial settlement from CPS but, as they said, it was bittersweet and hollow comfort as nothing would ever bring back their son. Because they were interracial and poor, to CPS and the police and the ER docs, that meant automatically that they were bad parents and there was nothing more to be said. And that kind of shit happens way more frequently than you'd like to think.

Having been in the legal field and knowing the system, that kind of shit happens way more than you'd like to think. CPS often does more harm than good, and often goes after the wrong people and takes the wrong children, leaving alone those who really need the help and who are truly suffering abuse and neglect. And often they leave middle and upper class families completely alone, even if there's abuse and neglect.