Sunday, May 18, 2008
A short note on Desperate Housewives
Yes, I admit that I watch Desperate Housewives.
Now that we have that painfully unmanly confession out of the way we can get on to the point of the post: That Tom Scavo's hideous daughter falsely accused Lynette of beating and burning her and complained to Child Protective Services about her, all in an elaborate plot to get Lynette sent away for good. Lynette is arrested, perp walked out in front of her biological children by a cop who assumes that she is guilty, and is told by her lawyer that she might lose all her children if the charges stick.
Scary, primal stuff, to be sure, but not just that. Also, a broadside attack on the "guilty until proven innocent" approach that the law sometimes takes to people accused of child abuse. It is interesting -- and a good sign -- that 20 years after the atrocity of the Fells Acre Day School case the pop cultural tide has turned to such a degree that the writers of Desperate Housewives knew that they could tweak the deep-seated, but very modern, fear of false accusations of child abuse.
7 Comments:
By 
randian, at
Mon May 19, 01:24:00 AM:
It's interesting the target of the accusation was a woman, which is rare. False accusations of child abuse are horrible at any time, but a woman is going to have a much easier time getting out from under it. The system usually takes a woman's protestations of innocence seriously, where for a man it will proceed under the assumption he's guilty.
By 
, at
Mon May 19, 03:27:00 PM:
Years ago when I was teaching Architectural Drafting at a trade school one of my top students stopped coming to class. He showed up two weeks later and asked for help in catching up on his work. His daughter was upset with him because he cut off her allowance so she accused him of abusing her. She recanted immediately when the police showed up, cuffed him and hauled him away, but in California, once an accusation is made, you are toast. The emotional and financial cost to his family was extreme, as he was out of work at the time and getting training for a new career. No evidence of abuse was ever found. The "guilty until proven innocent" routine is supposed to be part of the Napoleonic Code, not our legal system.
By , at
Mon May 19, 05:00:00 PM:
A couple of years ago two friends of mine, who were new parents, had DCFS called on them by someone who claimed to have seen the husband take their infant son outside in his diaper. When it came out that both parents had been diagnosed with depression at one or another point in their lives, DCFS threatened to take their son away from them. They were allowed to keep their son eventually, but were subjected to social workers crawling over their house and lives with a fine-toothed comb. In addition the husband was not allowed to be alone with the son until he had completed a psych exam (which caused financial hardship for them as the mother was the only one employed at the time), and both were ordered to take a parenting class. It was a very frightening experience for them and definitely an eye-opening one for me--it caused me to think long and hard about having children, knowing that if I did, my life could be turned upside down on someone's whim.
By , at
Mon May 19, 05:14:00 PM:
Uh - Hello? Anybody noticing what's going on in Texas right now? 450+ kids taken away from their parents?
By randian, at
Mon May 19, 05:17:00 PM:
What possible nefarious intent could a father have in taking his infant son outside in his diaper? Should he have done so sans diaper?
By , at
Mon May 19, 06:31:00 PM:
Randian--I'm not clear on that myself. *shrug* If I recall correctly, it happened in late fall so I guess the idea was the baby would catch cold? Anyway, it certainly demonstrates just how arbitrary and "out of nowhere" the whole incident was.
By , at
Mon May 19, 06:58:00 PM:
I think we need to get awat from so much "mandatory sentencing". To get away from that we need to reduce "legislating from the bench".
Once upon a time in a less PC age we needed our daughter to start sleeping in her own room. She didn't like that so she screamed, for hours, and hours until she went to sleep. Someone called the police who showed up early the next morning. We were gone for the day so they asked the neighbor about us and if we took good care of our children. She was able to answer their questions so they never stopped by to talk to us.
In todays world every parent is treated like a potential criminal
