Reason has a horrifying and harrowing report from Robby Soave detailing the months-long saga of corruption and abuse that a family suffered at the hands of law enforcement and child protective services. It is well worth reading the whole article, which I will only briefly summarize here.

The Lowther family of New Mexico found themselves in the crosshairs after a teacher at the four-year-old daughter’s school claimed that the girl reported that she’d been sexually abused by her father and her seven-year-old brother. The district attorney (DA) would eventually decline to move forward with the case because there was no evidence whatsoever, the child’s story changed wildly in the telling and included a number of obviously fantastical details, the father passed multiples polygraph tests, and it’s likely that the girl was really just describing her father helping her wipe after using the toilet (something all parents have done for their children many times). But in between the initial “report” from the girl and the DA’s decision to drop the whole matter, the Lowther family was ripped apart, the children were placed in foster care, the father was fired from his job and labeled a child rapist by the media, the young girl was subjected to lengthy interrogations and extraordinarily invasive physical exams, the family was forced to shell out $300,000 in legal expenses, and the accused father and his wife were both summarily stripped of all parental rights, not to mention their Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights as well.

The most frightening aspect of the story is the malicious and underhanded manner with which the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department (CYFD) and local police operated throughout the proceedings. They decided from the outset that Adam Lowther must be guilty (because who has ever heard of a four-year-old kid telling fanciful stories?) and treated him like a child-raping felon, accordingly. These agencies were interested in establishing guilt by whatever means necessary, not ascertaining the objective truth. They also had the advantage of a system that automatically turns entire families into wards of the state as soon as someone in government decides that someone in that family may have done something wrong. . .

After being contacted by the school, the police forced their way into the family’s home, without a warrant, and forbade the mother, Jessica, from speaking to her children. Eventually, the children would end up in foster care. They were briefly returned to Jessica’s custody (Adam was not allowed to see his kids for several months after the initial arrest), but she had to have her parents move in and act as “safety monitors.” The children were removed from their mother’s custody once again when CYFD got word that the safety monitors didn’t believe in Adam’s guilt.

It is the nightmare scenario that every parent dreads. What if your child goes to school with a story he made up in his head, or repeats something he heard from a friend, or for whatever other reason says something that accidentally implicates you as an abuser or worse? (Read more from “The Horrifying Case That Proves Our Parental Rights Are Under Serious Attack in This Country” HERE)

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