When the politically correct rule the legal system, as they do today, no one is safe.

Our legal system is a whorehouse, abetted by halfwit social workers who get bonuses for every conviction.

Logic and common sense have been thrown out the window, and feminist victimology is instead used to make decisions.

Pathetic.

Here, here! Maybe it's payback for me spamming Freds Phelps site with emails. They all in the same basket, Fred Phelps, the "Puritans", and self righteous mental vacumn chambers who are probably afraid of their own genitalia..

I cannot believe the violence and visciousness of the letters here. These situations are always tragic, no matter how it comes out, and I think that sympathy for all concerned, from the family right down to the confused photo-mat employee is in order.

I work on the investigation side. You simply would not believe the pictures I have seen, turned in by photo-mat types. Yes they should turn things in when in doubt, since there is no clear and obvious line.

But back to the realities. We don't want to take your kids away, in fact we regularly leave kids in fairly dubious situations, because we know that a bad natural parent is still usually better than a good foster parent.

You should see some of the things we see. Mind you, very little of it is sexual abuse. Mostly it is violence and neglect. In all my years and thousands of files, I think I've seen out and out sexual abuse maybe 10 times.

What happened here is fairly common. A nothing complaint, but one that had to be checked out, and because it was low priority, the system took a long time to get around to it, and that caused the family a lot of pain. It happens all the time, people getting ground up by the bureaucracy.

And just think, had it been awful, had it really been abuse, look at how long the system was willing to leave the kids in the families' care before it got around to investigating. Not good either.

I also often think that we could do families a lot of good, by not just dropping the charges, but by giving them some kind of certificate of good parenthood or something, a little gesture towards the pain we have caused.

But make no mistake, we have to cause it. I have seen some pretty horrific situations, that were only exposed because of pretty innocuous anomalies, like pictures.

Anyway, if you are acused, here are a few pointers:

1) DON'T call a lawyer, unless you are VERY VERY sure that the process is going to be adversarial. Because the second you do, it will become adversarial, and nasty. And painful and long, and ultimately, not good for your kids.

2) DO insist on immediate investigation. Sit in your local child & family services office waiting room (with your kids banging off the walls if possible) demanding to be investigated, right now. You'd be surprised how uncomfortable bored acting out kids can make a child welfare worker. They want that to go away, soon.

3) This is tricky, but calling in supervisors earlier rather than later is a good idea. Supervisors got there by being good at their jobs, they will clear you if you are innocent quicker than a front line (terrified of making a mistake) type will. But if it goes down the track far enough before they are called in, then they have to back their front line folks, even if they think they are wrong.

4) Nobody wants it to go to court, court is a total crap-shoot. Frankly, judges are the worst part of the system. I've seen them screw over nice families and put children back with monsters.

5) Don't back down on anything you do with your kids, ie if you used to bathe with them naked, keep it up. Changing your behaviour without specific instructions is an admission of guilt (changing your behaviour at their request is an admission of good parenting). Don't don't don't let it get to the kids that there might be something wrong. Kids are kids and they will process it funny, and god knows what they will say in order to protect you and themselves.

6) Yeah I investigate, but please, tell the truth. We don't get freaked by how much you drink or if you do a line or two (you should see the things that we see, usually your sins are pretty minor really), we actually usually want to help you. We don't want your kids, we have too many already, if there is some way we can help you work things out we will. So let's cut the shit as quickly as possible, I can close and clear this one and get back to the crack violence starvation that makes up most of my caseload, and you can go on camping and drinking and taking naked pix.

7) Don't get angry. Yeah, its easy to say, and totally understandable when you do it, but all the worst cases I have run into, got really angry. Most of what we see is angry moms and dads that beat their children, so we have a bit of thing about anger. Instead tell me the investigator that you are worried about the kid(s) and want to help them, do I know of this and that that might be cool (actually I do).

8) Don't worry about the record. You'd be surprised at how many helping types have records themselves. It goes with having a hard time, and having a hard time is pretty much a prerequisite for being a good social worker. You aren't entitled not to have one because you are middle class, in terms of parenting, we are all in the same boat.

9) Cops are very very stupid, and are best dealt with in monosyllables. Never volunteer anything, keep yourself to yes or no, and get the child welfare people on the scene as soon as you can. Cops are not your friend, but social workers just might be.