A child said he was being sexually and physically abused by his father. The father alleged the mother was brainwashing the child against him. One reporter dug into years of case files to understand how courts decided to interpret the facts.
Jesus, this is dark.
Yeah, poor kid - whatever is happening, it’s destroying his childhood
Yeah, for serious. There are so many conflicting reports and noted failures by various experts and the judge. Hard to determine how much to rely on anything anyone is saying. Poor kid.
Truly one where I’m not sure if I’m better off having read it.
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Am I taking crazy pills or is the dad clearly and obviously the abuser based on the evidence shown in this article alone? Dozens and dozens of mandatory reporters accounts being not just taken non seriously, but completely declining to investigate them? Countless statements from the child himself saying what his dad does, multiple accounts of him fearing his dad. All brushed aside as “his mother is crazy”. What the actual fuck?
That poor child.
That was what I got out of it.
I think it also serves as a warning about men’s rights movements and the phony psychology their manufacturing to support themselves
Am I taking crazy pills
no, it’s just how the patriarchy works (and it somehow takes it further and uses shit like this to convince men that the system is somehow entirely geared to harm them)
I don’t understand how the child protection agency here could think these medical, mental health, and educational professionals would all risk their reputation and licensure to somehow help Christine.
I hate to say this but CPS are staffed with, well, regular people. And regular people come with all sorts of biases and bad takes, some even with abusive tendencies and even history.
Add to that the extreme stress of that kind of work, and the poor conditions (bad pay, staff shortages, not enough training), and you far too often get a bunch of jaded people just ticking boxes without much concern for what they’re looking at.
When we say defund the police, it’s services like CPS we hope the money will go to instead, because they are in absolute dire need of it.I didn’t get that feeling from the article. The reports from the professionals were overwhelmingly about specific concerns raised from the child.
The doctors aren’t exactly writing reports which consist solely of “Mother is concerned with X, I’ve done nothing else but put this on paper.” They might include the mothers concerns as a history or for some context, but they focused on their observations and examinations.
The reports weren’t exactly mentioned as fabrications. The bruises, rashes, and accounts of what happened seem to have been validated. Wether or not the accounts were rehearsed is up for debate, but the medical professionals might be hesitant to make that call for a variety of reasons.
But she did learn that during the initial investigation Bruce spontaneously confessed to police officers, court officials and child welfare investigators that decades earlier, at age 16, he had sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl. According to police reports, Bruce said he performed a sex act on the child while babysitting her on a joint family vacation in the Poconos. (Colorado police did not open a case because the incident had taken place outside their jurisdiction.)
“There was no victim in that situation except myself,” Bruce told me. “That alleged victim did not suffer and had no recollection of it. But I beat myself up for decades thinking that I was fucked up, right? The silver lining being I finally told everybody. And everybody said: ‘Dude, you were young and stupid and pubescent. … Don’t beat yourself up about that.’”
It is true that a lot of adolescents do terrible things because adolescence is a difficult time. And true that the vast majority will grow up into decent adults. But this is a full grown man claiming that the abuse harmed him, the abuser, and not the child he abused. It is evidence that he absolutely remains a danger, on top of all the other evidence that he is, in fact, a danger. He can and will rationalise anything away to protect his own fucked up psyche.
I hope the publicity helps the kid. What he’s been forced to endure is monstrous.
Yeah, that was pretty weird shit to say. Idk if publicity is gonna help. Imagine everyone you know knowing that your dad molested and abused you… probably tough shit for a kid
The dad still has custody, with apparent impunity for ongoing abuse. Everyone knowing about it is the least of the kid’s worries.
This is a wild story. I’d watch a tv show or movie based on this. I hope the kid ends up alright.
