A Primer for Parents and Other CaretakersWho Have Been Accused of Child Abuse or Neglect

The Shocking Truth, Before you Get to Court

It is 2:00 a.m., your kids are safely tucked in their beds asleep. You lay in the dark dozing peacefully next to your wife, oblivious to all that went wrong, or right, during the long day before, and still several hours of blissful rest away from starting it all again. Suddenly, you are bolt upright at the incredible boom of gunfire inside your home, or was it in your head? Merely a too realistic dream? Your wife is beside you, asking what is happening. Your not sure if she is talking about what you heard, but all you can think to do is shush her hard, and wait while you listen intently, try to clear your head and think of what to do next. Then, boom, boom, boom, there it is again! Your heart shoots of to a million beats a minute – you feel it beating hard in your ears. You feel like you are going to catch fire. Your senses scramble to decide whether the middle of the night booming at your front door is real. That last triple boom tells you it is all too real, your wife’s frightened moan and the terrified cries of “Daddy! Mommy!” from your kids down the hall tell you it is all too real, but at least, you are fairly certain, it was not gunfire after all. More booms at the door get your feet moving. You jump out of bed and hear behind the booms muffled shouts, “It’s the police, open up right now!”

You grab your pants intending to put them on so you can run go to the door to see what is the matter, when WHAM! You barely had one leg in your pants, backwards. No matter, screaming humans have broken into your home and they are coming fast up the hall sounding like giants running toward your bedroom door. You hear them kick open the first door they come to, your eight year old daughter’s, then “WHAM!,” your six year old son’s door. You hear your children’s terrified screaming as your instincts kick in and fear departs; you forget the pants and bound in your underwear with one pant-leg stuck around your ankle, the rest covering your foot like a way-too-long-sock trailing behind you as you approach your bedroom door on your way to save them. Simultaneously, you reach for your door and it is explodes open toward you. You fall hard backwards as the door hits you like a bolt of lightening in the head and knocks you down. You cannot think at all now, you need to find your feet and get out to your kids! Nothing else matters at all. You start to crawl up the dresser next to where you landed when WHAM! A giant black boot lands hard in your back from above and knocks you back down again. You are face-down flat on the floor once again, still in the dark, but this time with a heavy black boot which has slid hard up your back and is now leaving its tread-marks deep in the side of your neck. A cold steel rifle barrel pushes hard into the side of your face. You can barely hear screaming men and women yelling now, someone floating above you screaming at you, “Don’t move, you piece of s__t!!! Don’t f___ing move or I will shoot you!”

You can’t move anyway, but you struggle to twist your head against the black boot for a quick glance upward to see whether your tormentor is even human. He appears to be, arms, legs, and despite his guns, helmets, and black, black clothes. You are too far gone to be afraid however. You shout in return for his shouts, horror, anger and despair, the things of a dangerous man, evident in your words, “Where are my kids? What do you want? Don’t you f___ing hurt my kids! I will kill YOU, mother f___er!” The ape pushes his boot harder down on your neck – it is going to snap! You cannot talk or scream or do anything anymore. You cannot see the monster above you, but you imagine his sneering face boring into you. Horribly, you can hear your children crying the cry only the most terrified little ones can cry; endless screeching intake of air, long breathless silence where no air goes in and no air goes out, then, finally, an explosive scream, MOMMMMMMYYYYYYYY!” The horrible cry ululates convulsively. You imagine snot and slobber pouring from your babies’ precious, terrified faces and you endure their helpless entreaties.

You are helpless to save them. Suddenly, anger wells up inside. It has finally occurred to you that these middle-of-the-night marauders are those you had always heard were supposed to “Serve and Protect” you! “How dare they!” You let them hear those words, good and loud, along with a lot of other choice words which have managed to accompany them from your mouth whether or not you wished for them to. You don’t care. By now, as you hear the cops taking your screaming kids from your home, you begin to fight. Your instinct is to kill these bastards, and you would if only the guy with his boot digging into your neck and face, the one with the rifle barrel in your face, would just move. He seems to have magical strength to keep you on the floor despite your strong efforts to get up. You cannot even move your hands. You realize that your hands are tied behind your back, handcuffs! No wonder! More anger!

Cops now have you on your feet and are hauling you from your home. You can still hear your kids as the officers haul you out, and their cries get loud again as you are hauled outside. You see your wife across the yard and in the dark street being shoved into the back seat of a cop car like some common criminal. You are sure that her hands were cuffed behind her, just like yours. You look around for your kids’ cries and see them at last. They are being handed over by the cops to some strange woman who is urging them to quiet down and to get into her car. “If you ever want to see your parents again, you will get in and be quiet!” You see her climb into her car after shoving your kids, and then her tail lights light, fog pours from her car’s exhaust, and she practically peels out of there with a slight squeal of the tires, racing away from your home with your kids and you have no damned idea whatsoever, what is going on! You begin again to scream at the cops, but they just haul you violently toward a cop car with its lights on, punching you hard in the sides with fists and batons as they drag you along, not allowing you any chance to walk but yelling that you had better walk. They whack you hard in the gut to make you bend over, as your last breath for what seems an eternity whistles out of you at the knife-sharp jolt to your abdomen, the cops throw you head-first into the car. Now, your feet are being kicked by the cops into the car like rubber soccer balls, and you vaguely hear them slam the car door shut, painfully pinching the toes of your bare feet. All you hear now is a cop radio, “Unit Three, . . . proceed code four, to south . . . .”

The cops soon release you, but your kids remain gone. All the cops can tell you after they release you is, “Somebody has alleged that you sexually molested your children or something.” They tell you that the woman who took your kids is a social worker from the “DCFS,” they hand you a paper that tells you that your children have been detained by the Department of Children and Family Services, and that there will be a hearing the juvenile court which you may attend in three days, and they leave you standing, wondering what happened!