Rushing to help
There is very little in common between the crazy FLDS cult, which is now all over the news, and Professor Christopher Ratte and his wife Professor Claire Zimmerman. And yet it is obvious for most of us that taking all the children from the FLDS compound in Texas was justified but we nodding our heads in disbelieve when we are reading how the state took custody over Professor Ratte child:
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte’s ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.
Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.
[…]
Almost everyone Chris Ratte met the night they took Leo away conceded the state was probably overreacting.
The common between the two stories is simple - the overreacting and the rush to take children from their parents without considering the level of danger to child and without sufficient proof. We are often mixing between bad choices and illegal choices, and we are rushing to assume guilt of parent, but we must be very careful balancing between the want to protect children and the harm we are causing when rushing to intervene.
Tags: Child abuse, Children, FLDS
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Rogel @ April 29, 2008