Richard Wexler

[birdwatcher]

Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse




Совершенно фундаментальный труд. Вот, например, интересно -- я не понимал, что у CPS и PETA один предок:

This then was the tenor of the times when the Mary Ellen case arose in 1874. The intense attention it got in the press led to creation of the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Childern, in New York City.
   Such societies were quickly established all over the United States. By 1906 there were 240 SPCCs or Humane Societies—which concerned themselves with cruelty to both children and animals—nationwide. Often, they were known to their victims simply and appopriately as "the Cruelty".
   The groups were given the same sort of broad powers to investigate families and seek the removal of their children as is given to Child Protective Services today—with remarkably similar results:
—When the broad power they had wasn't enough, they bent or broke the law. Gordon writes that when agents of the Massachussetts SPCC couldn't get into a home legally, "they climbed windows. They searched without warrants. Their case notes frequently revealed that they made their judgements first and looked for evidence later... As one annual report put it delicately: It is true that we have taken risks on the margin of legal liability which seemed needful to rescue the child...but without cost to sciety...If `indiscreet zeal' which is made such a bugbear occasionally leads us into mistakes, the public will condone the error ... much more readily than they would approve the opposite fault of timidity or lukewarmness in cases of well-ascertained cruelty." In other words, they were "erring on the side of the child".

Ну, еще одна капля в море.