We have a picture of my dad pretending to give my (then two-year-old) sister a can of beer. He's holding the (empty) can up to her mouth and she has both hands on it and is trying to drink it. We think this picture is cute. We also have pictures of me voiding my body in the family garden in various ways (apparently this is something I did often) and a picture of me, my sisters, and two of our neighbor friends all standing in a group naked in our backyard. Another adult neighbor is smiling and holding one of the girls. We always laugh at this picture because of our freakish bowlegs and round little-kid tummies. My parents are extremely conservative (mellowing a bit over time, though) and they would be incredibly offended at the suggestion that there was anything inappropriate going on in their taking any of these pictures. We also have several shots of my dad peeing off of various boats and things. And yeah, every person I know has pictures of themselves with siblings in the bathtub. It's adorable as all get-out.

Some people are aroused by stockings, riding crops, jelly, and mud. If you're around any of those things, are you automatically assumed to be doing something sexual and wicked with them? If you're a farmer and around (naked!) livestock often, are you into beastiality? Of course not. We just flip out as a society at anything to do with children.

Good point Chris. Normal is relative. Just seemed pretty ordinary to me, but then I am just more than a bit skeeved out that people at all connect or see sexuality with naked kids.

"I wager most people don't have shots of children and adults pissing together or of a child holding a beer bottle. In other words, no not normal by cosensus."

Actually we have one of our dog drinking a beer, and I believe he is "naked" too.

I'm sorry that this guy got caught up in DCFS. The laws exist because people abuse children all the time, and the policies exist because people get away with abusing children all the time, and the vigilance exists because DCFS is charged with applying policies equally, without consideration for whether the person being investigated is wealthy and insulated or poor and exposed.

And so now the author reaches out to activist groups and an "expert witness" and offers their press releases as statistical evidence that what happened to him is indicative of, what? Terrible people hysterically going on witch hunts?

Here are some other things he might have learned from this experience: DFACS in Georgia, charged with protecting children, is terribly underfunded. That's why it looks so decrepit. That's how much we care about keeping kids safe.

DFACS in Georgia is constantly under attack for not protecting children. Tens of thousands of children end up experiencing childhoods that resemble war zones or rape rooms and are permanently damaged. Perhaps the worst damage to these kids is the inchoate, life-long unfolding realization that nobody stepped in to protect them.

The author should learn the difference between nutball advocacy and statistics if he wishes to use statistics. Talking to a paid consultant who claims to "see families stripped and ripped apart" may have felt very affirming, but it doesn't match the statistical reality that there are actually so few people who have been "wrongly convicted" (many people claim "wrongful conviction" who are guilty as sin) that we remember them by name; we know every case, and these cases get endlessly recycled in stories like this. And "unsubstantiated" complaints aren't the same as false accusations. They're often first reports of abuse that pile up before a social worker can find enough evidence to remove children. Learn this stuff, or write a personal memoir.

The author wants a "system" to protect him and the "dozens" of other people like him (dozens? recent years? nationally?). He got it: it was the investigation. It was very scary for him and his family, but instead of spending his time feeling like the only victim in the room, he should have learned something. How could anybody who bothers to take even a passing glance at real sexual abuse statistics continue to express amazement that anybody would find a child's bottom sexy? And say this to a social worker, who sees it every day?

As a court-appointed advocate for abused children in Georgia and a victim advocate, I know dozens of children who have experienced the type of abuse that this author apparently cannot even imagine, and the fact that the evidence bar is set so high on protecting them, and the public is so easily swayed by overblown and frankly untrue stories of unfair persecution only perpetuates this abuse. The author might have learned this, had he looked further than his own fears. That's what it means to be an adult and a member of a community charged with protecing all children, not just one's own. I won't deny that he has been through something traumatic, but he seems to have gained no empathy or insight from it. Instead, by stoking unfounded fears about imagined rampant persecution (you can always find an "expert witness"), he's the one spreading hysteria. He should thank that photoshop worker for doing what he apparently wouldn't ever risk doing: speaking out when a child appears to be in trouble.

But hey, it's all about hanging out in France, badly channeling Camus, right?

You said what needed saying.

Some of you people would pass out if you ever went to Japan, where families relaxing naked in a hot bath together is a common cultural practice, even among conservative types.

"How could anybody who bothers to take even a passing glance at real sexual abuse statistics continue to express amazement that anybody would find a child's bottom sexy?"

That statement is one example of how you clearly miss the author's point, Tina. The "amazement" is at how parents' photographs of their children playing at a campsite (or in the bathtub, or breastfeeding) can be used as sufficient evidence to begin an investigation by child welfare services. This is incomprehensible, and an example of policy gone wrong. And as long as government institutions have the right to begin a full-blown investigation of my family (including warrant-less searches, and the threat of removing children from the home) on the basis of a bathtub photograph, then the problem remains unresolved.

Again, to put it simply: naked photographs of children should NOT constitute sufficient evidence for beginning a legal investigation of the children's family. At this point, the door is wide open for such an event to happen to anyone at any time. I find that unacceptable; so, too, does the author. Hence the "amazement" the many of us have experienced upon reading the article, and what we find troublesome (and in need of remedy). You may think this unimportant, and that's your prerogative. But at least be clear on what the author finds "amazing", and what deeper (and competing) issues are at stake.