By Bradley W. Pierce, Vice President and General Counsel, Heritage Defense.


Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations are supposed to be about safeguarding children from harm. In every state, the standard CPS protocol for an investigation is, among other things, to conduct a home visit and to interview each child by themselves. However, these tactics can themselves inflict significant trauma upon the very children they aim to protect.¹ These harms are increasingly recognized by legal analysts,² child welfare caseworkers and supervisors, tribal workers and supervisors, police officers and detectives, foster parents, birthparents, teachers and school counselors, medical examiners, mental health providers, juvenile court staff, child welfare trainers, and foster youth.³

While in situations of real abuse the cost of the harm created should be offset by the benefit of the harm prevented, this is not at all the case when the investigation is based on false or overblown allegations. In such situations, the effect of the standard CPS investigation means that the child, not to mention their family, ends up more harmed, not less.

Investigations cause immediate shock, confusion, and fear.

The very nature of a CPS investigation, especially in the home, can surprise, shock, and traumatize children.⁴ Investigations are unexpected and can be quite sudden.⁵ According to research from Portland State University's Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services, children frequently report feelings of “surprise, shock, and chaos” during investigations.⁶ Many develop a sense of “powerlessness, helplessness,” and even “guilt or failure.”⁷ This is increased when the investigations commence in the middle of the night.⁸

Many parents recount their children crying and sobbing after interviews, demonstrating the immediate emotional impact of these investigations.⁹ Children do not understand what is going on or what is going to happen.¹⁰ This leads to fear that their parents will be arrested¹¹ or even that the children will be taken away.¹²

Children are afraid of being intruded upon by strangers.

Children develop “a strong sense of bodily security, intimacy, and privacy” from a very young age.¹³ Developmental biology confirms common sense, that even very young children form strong attachments to primary caregivers and experience trepidation toward strangers.¹⁴ Additionally, children are generally taught from a young age not to talk to strangers.¹⁵

But during a CPS interview, children are expected to open up and discuss private and potentially intimate subjects with social workers who are complete strangers to them.¹⁶ And children perceive that these strangers have the power to completely upend their family life. When government officials perform physical examinations or interviews, they are experienced by children as trespassers crossing inherent and deeply ingrained boundaries.¹⁷

Interview techniques may be frightening.

Investigative interviews themselves present particular challenges because children can be subjected to traumatizing interview methods.¹⁸ Some interviews involve deliberately frightening tactics.¹⁹ In one documented case, CPS workers reminded children who had been walking home from the park that “bad guys [are] waiting to grab you.”²⁰

Inexperienced caseworkers sometimes “ask questions in ways that are not very nuanced,” and may “ask leading questions” or demonstrate bias.²¹ This may result from the fact that some “caseworkers are not trained at interviewing children regarding serious allegations.”²² Such techniques compound the trauma of an already distressing experience.

Repeated interviews exacerbate trauma.

Particularly harmful are repeat investigations and interviews. Repeated interviews cause additional trauma each time the child is asked to retell their story.²³ Even when there was no abuse they may still endure multiple interviews about traumatic subjects, forcing them to “constantly repeat negative aspects of the child's life or behaviors,” which can “negatively impact a child's self-esteem.”²⁴ One mother recounts it: “My daughter, who was only 3, was so nervous being interrogated by strangers so many times that she started behaving irregularly.”²⁵

Strip searches are experienced as abuse.

Some investigations involve strip searches and physical examinations for signs of abuse. The distinction between routine medical examinations and investigatory examinations is significant. As one legal commentator notes, “It is patently wrong for states to assume that a child will be equally comfortable with a full or partial strip search conducted during an annual checkup and a full or partial strip search conducted during a child abuse investigation.”²⁶

To make matters worse, “In the ultimate irony, children who are subject to genital examinations appear to experience the investigatory examinations as sexual abuse.”²⁷ In one case, the five-year-old was “very upset by the procedures and asked for her parents.”²⁸ In another, the six-year-old child experienced nightmares and anxiety that led to six months of counseling.²⁹

Trauma has many lasting effects.

The initial visits by CPS workers, regardless of the investigation’s outcome, “can create lasting fear and trauma within the family,” including “the psychological damage to a child from being physically searched for bruises or marks by a stranger.”³⁰ When allegations prove false, the trauma is particularly felt as the child has endured invasive procedures without any offsetting benefit of protection from actual abuse.

Studies indicate children involved in these investigations suffer from “trauma, anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, stigmatization, powerlessness, self-doubt, depression, and isolation.”³¹ The psychological impact can manifest in nightmares³² and behavioral changes, with one documented case describing a child who “displays a lot of external behaviors acting out in school and bullying kids” following unfounded investigations.³³ Investigations can also harm the parent-child relationship.³⁴

Conclusion

The standard CPS investigatory approach causes significant harm to the children involved. When investigations stem from false or overblown allegations, this harm is completely unjustifiable and adverse to the aim of protecting children.

Instead, CPS workers who seek to protect children should not rush to enter a home or conduct child interviews without first weighing the harms to determine whether interviews are really necessary. Very often, there are other methods available of determining children are safe without employing these more harmful tactics. When trauma to children can be avoided, it should be.