The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).
In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.
Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.
And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.
While this story is appalling - it’s not a fight for power that’s going on here. It’s the justifiable fear that if they don’t investigate they will be the social worker on the front page of the news paper with the headline “Child abused/dies after this official fails to act”. As system based on good will and ‘better safe than sorry’ is being deliberately abused by the caller. There clearly need to be better mechanisms to prevent this, but it’s not a trivial circle to square.
Prevention isn’t feasible, but reaction certainly is. Caseworkers should be able to go after false complainants in extraordinary circumstances.
Good point. Aggravated false complaints feel like the should be a criminal matter
Since we are in agreement that the u justified complaints should be considered a criminal matter, we have to go back and look at the caseworker’s actions again.
In complying with the criminal demand to act, the caseworker is now either another victim of that criminal act, or the caseworker is complicit in perpetrating that act of harassment. In the former case, the caseworker should be making their own criminal complaint against the perpetrator. In the latter, the caseworker should be joining the perpetrator in jail.
The caseworker is effectively another victim here, for the reasons I set out in my previous comment. There needs to be both an organisational framework and legal framework to support them. You say “t he caseworker should be making their own criminal complaint against the perpetrator”. What existing law is being broken? I don’t know - do you? If the complaints are anonymous how does an individual caseworker bring a complaint? Even if they bring the complaint in the belief that that the report is vexatious- does that mean that they are free to ignore the complaint? Or do they actually still need to che k it out?
You don’t have to be the victim to file a criminal complaint. The laws being broken are harassment of the family, filing a false report, and probably a bunch of others.
“Qualified immunity” is the idea that so long as an agent of the state is acting responsibly and in good faith, they are immune from prosecution. Here, upon observing these criminal acts against the family, their responsibility is to make the criminal complaint. Failure to act should cost them their immunity and make them civilly and criminally liable for the harassment.
Edit: there is no such thing as an “anonymous” complaint. The 6th amendment guarantees the right to face one’s accuser. By accepting and acting on the accusation, the state violates the victim’s constitutional rights of it attempts to maintain the complainant’s anonymity.
" there is no such thing as an “anonymous” complaint. The 6th amendment guarantees the right to face one’s accuser. By accepting and acting on the accusation"
… so if someone phones up from an unkown number and says 'Mrs X is abusing her kid", nothing gets investigated?
What I am saying is that the state is not really allowed to say they had an anonymous complaint. The victim can file a criminal complaint of harassment against the caller, and subpoena any identifying information. They can file a lawsuit for defamation and subpoena the information. If they don’t cooperate with those subpoenas, they become complicit.