Indianapolis Star	September 3, 1999

"A system in need of repair," By Tim Swarens

By Tim Swarens
Indianapolis Star
September 3, 1999

The stranger on the step is asking to come inside. She’s official and she’s serious and she’s just made a terrible accusation: Ma’am, we’ve received a child abuse complaint against you.

The mother’s mind reels from the sudden arrival of a stranger with the power to take away her children. But in a few seconds she must make several crucial decisions. Tell everything? Tell nothing? Cooperate? Resist?

Shirley Calabretta said no the first time the stranger asked to enter her home. Ten days later, the stranger was back, with a police officer. Calabretta was sufficiently intimidated to do what they asked.

Now she knows that constitutional protections still apply, even to a mother anonymously accused of a horrible crime.

Last week, a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled that the social worker and the police officer had violated the Calabretta family’s rights.

The case turned on two key issues from the 1994 child abuse investigation in Yolo County, California. Do abuse investigators need a search warrant to enter a home uninvited? And did the investigators act properly in coercing the mother to remove her 3-year-old girl’s pants so that the social worker could search for bruises.

The judges found in the family’s favor on both issues, ruling that because an emergency did not exist, a warrant was necessary. Judge Andrew Kleinfeld also wrote in his opinion that the strip search shredded the mother’s authority and dignity.

Three facts of the case illustrate problems with how we protect children in this country.

First, the social worker was responding to an anonymous accusation of abuse. The caller reported hearing a child in the Calabretta home cry, “no, Daddy, no.” On another occasion a child in the backyard was heard to scream, “no, no, no.”

No other evidence of abuse existed. The anonymous caller was never interviewed. It could have been a concerned citizen, or a vindictive neighbor.

Second, the social worker’s biases shaped her investigation. The Calabretta family is deeply religious. The children also are home-schooled. Both ways of life—although practiced by many families with well-nurtured children—raised red flags in the investigator’s mind.

Third, Shirley Calabretta admitted to occasionally spanking her children. The social worker told the mother that paddling is illegal in California. It isn’t.

Many social workers are taught that paddling is tantamount to abuse. Many disagree with that assessment, but most would agree that spanking can lead to serious abuse.

But that wasn’t the case here. The social worker was trying to enforce her opinion rather than the law.

Too often when it comes to abuse allegations, we split along familiar lines. One side hollers that investigators are too intrusive. The other notes that thousands of abused children are never saved.

Both are right. And both are wrong.

Each side is reacting to the symptoms, not the disease. It’s the system that is seriously ill.

Last year in Indiana, 65 children died from abuse or neglect. That’s an atrocious figure.

But another figure also is troubling. Of the 47,144 investigations launched last year, only a third involved substantiated abuse or neglect.

No doubt some truly abusive people escaped detection. But thousands of innocent parents and their children suffered the trauma of a false allegation.

As it now works, we routinely hire abuse investigators, often with little life experience and insufficient training, load them with a heavy caseload and reward them with low pay. Then we give them the responsibility to protect children and the power to rip apart families. Mistakes are inevitable.

Think of the system as a car with a cracked engine and a flat tire. Either we need a new car or both repairs must be made to get us where we have to go.

Reprinted with permission from Indianapolis Star