The Ghosts of the Orphanage
buzzfeednews.com
buzzfeednews.com
Any kind of oversight necessarily puts people in power over others' children, as does the very concept of an institution or orphanage, including of course schools. It is that power, not which geometric shapes the organizing power insists get put on the wall that attracts child predators.
Giving people power over children is the problem. Attempts to "make sure these things don't happen again" so far have massively increased child abuse. The numbers I checked for the Netherlands are staggering: 1 out of every 3 children in child care gets sexually assaulted in the sense that they report it to the police. Roughly half of those gets abused by foster parents or government employees, half by other children (they just put babies with teenagers, then leave them alone due to lack of manpower or outright unwillingness of employees). Suicide rates are almost 10x what they are outside of child care.
And the incredibly sad part is ... once in child care 1 in 3 gets sexually assaulted, but barely 1 in 10 is put in child care because of allegations (usually not even a complaint) of sexual abuse. Mostly it's because of ... hygiene problems.
The problem is that without giving institutions power over children, nothing happens: children will refuse to leave their parents in all but the most extreme cases of abuse, until they are at least halfway through their teens. And the huge problem is that statistics clearly show that that is the right decision to make for the children: outcomes for children with their parents, even when abused, are far superior to outcomes in child care. In terms of education, in terms of living independent as an adult.
Here's some links:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/norways_hidden_s...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/29/rotherham-ch...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_child_abuse_scandal
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/social-services-centre...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6112955/telford-politicians-ch...
And, of course, the abuse was accepted and reinforced:
http://www.childrenscreamingtobeheard.com/fostering-scandal/
Who turned out to be pedophiles in the past 20 years or so ?
* The social services chief for a large British city. Note: AFTER he was convicted of sexually assaulting children Graham Bould was still put in charge of child services, as well as other social services (no worries: I'm sure he behaved himself much better around adults ...)
* an unspecified number of North Wales psychiatric child care workers at 18 different government facilities for child care (and some foster parents), who sexually abused at least 140 children
* The local councilor of that same city. These 2 worked together to, firstly, allow the local vicar to abuse children, and all 3 worked together to threaten abused children into silence.
* The child psychiatrist in charge of the "Child Expert Commission" for the entire country of Norway, who decide whether children get taken from their parents or not
* a dozen French government psychologists, in charge of diagnosing children in psychiatric care
* hundreds of Spanish government doctors, nurses, and also nuns and priests
* US public school employees, hundreds, from janitors to administrators and social workers
* Sebastian Edathy, a very high level German politician, and a senior cabinet minister in the government of Angela Merkel, Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, was fired for protecting him and tipping him off
* Dutch Jehova's witnesses employees and members cooperated to commit and hide child sexual abuse, for decades
* Government day care employees in the Netherlands
* Red Cross and Doctors without Borders aid workers (who did it, with the knowledge of the top of the organizations, for over a decade)
* Public school employees in Holland exploited the children entrusted to them on a large scale (specifically these were promising athletes sent to a special school)
* UN peacekeepers sexually abusing indigenous children in Western Sahara, Mali and other places
* Oxfam rescue workers (who were protected by the board of Oxfam)
* The leadership of an islamic school in the UK, and local politicians
Not pedophiles, but at the very least encouraging child abuse:
* A majority of the British parliament (who voted that private companies would be allowed to pay social workers to give them children they "offer up" for adoption (meaning they sell them))
Quote: "A foster agency receives £20.000 for every single child they sell, adoption agencies £36.000 for every child sold, all with tax payer’s money, most of the agencies are owned by ex social workers. So, are the agencies working with the social services?"
(Needless to say "somehow" these sold children have a disturbing habit to end up in prostitution. I wonder how that happens)
This is why children need to be part of the community, that's what oversight looks like. Teaches, parents, and social programs.
In many cases that was "unintentional". All these programs intended to do, in most cases, was to take the children away from the parents. Because they end up in a structure that is like a prison: enforced helplessness in an environment with predators, child abuse was the result.
In a non-negligible amount of cases, however, child abuse was the whole purpose of the social program. The people who carried out the program took the actions with the specific purpose of abusing children.
There is a third case of course, where the social programs merely break the power of parents (and still put the child in that environment), and abuse probably did not result.
Now the huge question is: would the outcome have been better, for the children (not the aid workers !), if no actions were taken at all.
And with the Dutch numbers we can calculate. Odds of abuse in the group of child care children ... something like 10%. Odds of abuse if child care interferes ... 33%. Yep ... the outcome would have been better if no actions had been taken at all (and that's taking the complaint numbers as fact, when in reality, of course, they're a lower bound).
Given what actually happens to these children, those prison-like institutions, I must say I can't call this outcome surprising in the least.
There's a movie, the first half of which is about this problem from an adult perspective: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7153766/
But the point is: the outcome would be better if nothing was done at all. It would be a lot more visible too, which I bet is the real issue the government is reacting to.
It’s important to make those distant authorities which somkften get things wrong be accountable, yet at the same time we have to avoid the bottomless pit of something like Stranger Danger. The examples you cite are sensational, but they’re not typical. The typical case is the child being raped by a family member or family friend, the wife being murdered by the husband, or the friend being murderers by a friend. For every extreme and chilling case of someone far away in a position of power abusing thst power, there are hundreds of much quieter yet no less damaging cases of the same thing being done close to home.
Why do you say "abused or neglected". They are not the same at all. And interfering in a case of neglect clearly leads to abuse within the child care system ...
At the very least child care will inflict massive psychological trauma on any child it interacts with. No child, no matter how neglected, will react positively to being torn from their parents. Being violently torn from their parents, then locked up into an unfamiliar environment that has predators ... that's just indescribably traumatic. And that's the best case for those services interfering ... That's assuming no actual abuse follows, which is clearly rather too likely.
The measure should of course be that that massive trauma is significantly less than the damage that the parents do if left in control. I would argue that in the case of neglect, that is essentially never the case. Even in the case of abuse, I would argue that it's rarely the case, and that the child should be the one taking the decision, and that child should be provided with the authority to undo that decision at will and without explanation. Children are perfectly capable of figuring out which is the better situation for themselves, a right systematically denied them in every child service.
And if you argue differently, can you really claim to be acting in the interests of the child ?
This is a best case scenario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR8cZuXPiYU&t=137s
Note: you might wonder what sort of abuse the mother subjected the child to ... well, she did not force the child to see his father despite a court order. For that, the judge took the child away from both his parents, and despite not getting adopted will not get to see either of his parents again until he is an adult ... Needless to say, the government defended this action, it is "justified". Why ? The agents followed the law and the judge did indeed have this option available to her (judge was female). Can you explain to me again why you are defending these people ?
Also in the example above, can you please let me know your opinion: because of this action, did the odds of the child getting abused increase or decrease because of the child services intervention, because any sane person knows perfectly well that those odds just went up massively.
And yes, child services taking children almost never happens because of actual abuse. Hygiene (as judged by teachers), and parental separation are the main causes (and by that we mean 80%+) of child services interfering with young children. Later it becomes theft (as in the child stealing something)
> The examples you cite are sensational, but they’re not typical.
No they're not. They're truly banal. If you read up on them you will quickly realize that the only reason those are examples at all is because of systematic fuckups on the part of the perpetrators, and even then that was usually not enough. Mostly there is also interference by someone in power to get any progress at all in the case. And notably: almost never does the government give the children back even when it was a goverment institution getting caught abusing the children. So there is zero willingness on the part of the government to act in the interest of the child, even when caught red handed abusing the child.
These are the people you're defending.
Clearly the 33% figure points out that abuse is far more likely in the child services case, than in an environment where nothing is done (children just left with parents). I guess it is, however, 17% short of "typical".
And, of course, despite this massive child abuse committed by social services, it has not actually helped. In theory they do this to prevent what happened in the 90s. And ... of course ... in that it is a total and complete failure, a few examples:
https://www.hoogeveenschecourant.nl/nieuws/hoogeveen/531051/...
https://www.omroepgelderland.nl/nieuws/2303872/Klopjacht-op-...
https://www.rtvdrenthe.nl/nieuws/125426/Cel-geeist-tegen-ped...
https://wnl.tv/2017/12/06/pedo-huisarts-opgepakt-om-ontucht-...
> much quieter yet no less damaging cases of the same thing being done close to home
I think reading the links will also quickly elucidate that every government, from the UK, to the Dutch, the US and the Norwegian government acted to protect the abuses, through legal and illegal means. So those cases are exceptional only in that they were big enough and that the victims actually managed to get heard. But if a small group of child care employees managed to systematically abuse 140 children for years, like in the UK case, how many cases are there of 1 child care employee abusing a child where the government succeeds in silencing the whole issue ? Hundreds ? Thousands ? That, to me, seems like an extremely low and conservative estimate. How many cases of children being left to themselves and then, when they become teenagers in such a forced prison situation, abusing each other ? I don't even want to guess.
You claim the scale of abuse by people in positions of power is small. And yet ... this is clearly not true:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/18/adoption-has...
It is not hard to find sources talking about the scale of the abuse. Just for the Britain alone, we're talking from 1000 to 20000 children per year. If you call that small scale, I will call you crazy.
Per year.
We can all see what the incentives are here. If these people truly acted to protect children, they would almost never actually act, and require truly extreme circumstances before they take a child away. In other words: these organizations would not have any meaningful work to do. Taking and abusing children is a self-reinforcing loop for these organizations: without that, they would shrink and eventually cease to exist. Their incentives are very clear: make the problem worse, and worse, and worse.
Now let's assume for a second that over time, these organizations actually do what's good for them, regardless of any early intentions. Then we would find no end of complaints and stories of the cruelty of these organizations online ...
Oh wait ...
That's exactly what we see. I'm sure it's nothing but a coincidence !
And yes, child services taking children almost never happens because of actual abuse. Hygiene (as judged by teachers), and parental separation are the main causes (and by that we mean 80%+) of child services interfering with young children. Later it becomes theft (as in the child stealing something)
That’s a suspiciously round %, and I’d love a citation for it. I think it would be helpful to get a sense of where you’re getting your numbers while avoiding the pages of opinion and invective.
I think the poster above you is a sensationalist, but those sort of things, and the things happening in the article are based on one simple fact: We don't value children.
We will spend money to lock up a juvenile (or adult) before we give resources to poor parents or poor children. We get bad enough results when parents are struggling financially and mentally to provide for their own children. Usually there is some soft of biological imperative compelling them. When you take a stranger and put them under the same sort of pressure while expecting them to care for children of others, who may already have significant behavioral problems, you are asking too much.
This is obviously going to attract the wrong sort of people, and the right sort of people will be influenced by them and frustrated in their own right.
It sounds like this school was a world unto itself. Kids did not participate in activities away from it. This is exactly the sort of thing that brings out the worst in people. I know this offends homeschoolers, but every child should have some outside authority they trust. Those authorities should be a mix of religious and secular.
This is a very important thing to internalize: whatever your arrangement. Any position that's given power over others, or over children, or over mental patients will attract exactly the sort of people that are the worst possible case to have such power.
Power over others ? Bullies, torturers, rapists.
Power over children ? Paedophiles.
Power over mental patients ? Bullies, torturers, rapists.
So any child care system, mental health system and prison system needs to be designed so that even with a group of paedophiles taking all the decisions (which WILL be the case, as demonstrated above) the system does not lead to abuse.
Is it the same in the US ? You bet [1]. What do US child abuse/child protection services do when caught molesting children ? They cover it up and protect the guilty. From that wikipedia page:
"Several lawsuits were brought in 2008 against the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF), accusing it of mishandling reports that Thomas Ferrara, 79, a foster parent, was molesting young girls.[36][37] The suits claimed that even though there were records of sexual misconduct allegations against Ferrara in 1992, 1996, and 1999, the DCF continued to place foster children with Ferrara and his then-wife until 2000.[36]"
"In July 2002, the federal court granted plaintiffs’ experts access to 500 children’s case files, allowing plaintiffs to collect information concerning harm to children in foster care through a case record review.[42] These files revealed numerous cases in which foster children were abused, and DYFS failed to take proper action. On June 9, 2004, the child welfare panel appointed by the parties approved the NJ State’s Reform Plan."
(note: no action was taken to punish the guilty. There was simply a request for a "reform plan", no mention is made for any checks to a reform plan)
"The foster parent, John Jackson, was licensed by the state, despite the fact that he abused his own wife and son, overdosed on drugs and was arrested for drunken driving. In 2006, Jackson was convicted in Santa Clara County of nine counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child by force, violence, duress, menace and fear, and seven counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.[32] The sex acts that he forced the children in his foster care to perform sent him to prison for 220 years. Later in 2010, Giarretto Institute, the private foster family agency responsible for licensing and monitoring Jackson's foster home and others, was also found to be negligent and liable for 75 percent of the abuse that was inflicted on the victim, and Jackson himself was liable for the rest.[32]"
"In 2009, Oregon Department of Human Services agreed to pay $2 million into a fund for the future care of twins who were allegedly abused by their foster parents; this was the largest such settlement in the agency's history.[34] According to the civil rights suit filed on request of the twins' adoptive mother in December 2007 in U.S. Federal Court, the children were kept in makeshift cages—cribs covered with chicken wire secured by duct tape—in a darkened bedroom known as "the dungeon." The brother and sister often went without food, water or human touch. The boy, who had a shunt put into his head at birth to drain fluid, did not receive medical attention, so when police rescued the twins he was nearly comatose. The same foster family previously took into their care hundreds of other children over nearly four decades.[35] DHS said the foster parents deceived child welfare workers during the checkup visits.[34]"
Apparently checkup visits in Oregon miss the fact that children are kept in cages.
Needless to say, all of the above cases make it very, VERY clear that only the minutest tip of the iceberg was actually caught. Serial paedophile works for Florida CPS, gets 400 children ... and abuses a single one ? Riiight. Let's realistically assume he violated half of them. That would mean about 0.5% of child abuse in child protective services in the US is actually caught.
In all cases, child rapists working for CPS in at least 4 states were each given hundreds of children, dozens per year. At least 78% of those, according to [2], were never sexually abused by their parents, and a further 11% were only abused in the sense that there was inadequate supervision, or their parents got drunk). Given that the above cases alone would reasonably be ~800 children that were abused, we can assume that 89% of those, or 716 were abused because child protective services protected them. That's for a period of about 8 years, and only the very tip of the iceberg, cases famous enough to be very widely reported. How many cases are like that ? 1% ? 10% ?
10% would mean that of all children child protective services takes in (~500000) about 15% get sexually abused, versus 0.08% of children in the general US society (0.009 * 0.09, according to the wikipedia page), or CLOSE TO 18518% MORE THAN WOULD BE ABUSED WITHOUT CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES
1% would mean that of all children child protective services takes in, about 1.5% get sexually abused, or about 20x more than if child protective services did not exist.
You know, the amount of children that child protective services gave to these convicted paedophiles in these very public cases (in half the cases WHEN THEY KNEW THOSE WERE CONVICTED PAEDOPHILES) is about equal to the total number of children sexually abused in the United States. So if the above cases are all there is, that would mean that at least half of the children sexually abused in the US get abused because Child protective services exists.
Which of course, creates a bigger need for more child protection. Where else could a paedophile go where the damage they do gets them more children ?
That's the result of creating an organization that's such a ridiculously tempting target for paedophiles.
And given that you're right, Europe does a lot more interfering, which would mean that in Europe the situation should be worse, not better.
Thanks for pointing me to the US. Much more numbers available. Sad, very, very, very sad numbers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_care_in_the_United_Stat...
What you have here is an example of what tends to happen when parents are missing.
Broken homes are a huge source of unprotected children today.