Reason has a horrifying and harrowing report from Robby Soave detailing the months-long saga of corruption and abuse that a family suffered at the hands of law enforcement and child protective services. It is well worth reading the whole article, which I will only briefly summarize here.
The Lowther family of New Mexico found themselves in the crosshairs after a teacher at their four-year-old daughter’s school claimed that the girl reported that she’d been sexually abused by her father and her seven-year-old brother. The district attorney (DA) would eventually decline to move forward with the case because there was no evidence whatsoever, the child’s story changed wildly in the telling and included a number of obviously fantastical details, the father passed multiples polygraph tests, and it’s likely that the girl was really just describing her father helping her wipe after using the toilet (something all parents have done for their children many times). But in between the initial “report” from the girl and the DA’s decision to drop the whole matter, the Lowther family was ripped apart, the children were placed in foster care, the father was fired from his job and labeled a child rapist by the media, the young girl was subjected to lengthy interrogations and extraordinarily invasive physical exams, the family was forced to shell out $300,000 in legal expenses, and the accused father and his wife were both summarily stripped of all parental rights, not to mention their Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights as well.
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