I've always said there should be a licensing system
Apparently you're allowed to have children even if you've been living under a rock since the mid-to-late 90s:
Dad unknowingly serves vodka cooler to 7 year old son
That's right. While at a baseball game, Christopher Ratte bought his son what he thought was plain ol' lemonade...despite clear indications on the bottle that Mike's Hard Lemonade is no soft drink. Apparently, he'd never heard of the beverage before. I am guessing he's also not one to read labels on the things he allows his children to ingest.
While putting Mr. Ratte's son into the system is a bit of a stiff punishment for giving junior a stiff drink, the Ratte family definitely need a crash course in not-so-current pop culture: Mike's Hard Lemonade is alcoholic, the chick in The Crying Game is actually a dude, and Al Gore did not in fact succeed in becoming president.
Comments
The father's a stupid idiot, but the actions taken by all of the officials are really deplorable and make me angry. Especially when these are the same types of officials (different cities, but same policies and poor judgement) who discover a severely and clearly malnourished and dehydrated child during a scheduled visit with a foster family, and decide not to report it because they claim they didn't know they were responsible for looking for signs of "poor nutrition" in the foster kids. The same types of officials responsible for putting severely physically abused children back in the homes of their still-drug-addicted mothers only to have the child show up in the morgue a month later, death from severe trauma to the head, or a drug overdose, or neglect and starvation.
Where's the judgement? Where's the case by case assessment? I know it cannot be an easy job. It's thankless, and dangerous, full of pitfalls and liabilities and there are severe consequences for all involved (especially the children) if the wrong decision is made in a case, and I have to believe that all these numbskulls really had the best interest of the child at heart when they made these decisions, but after the aunts showed up, and after the blood test showed no traces of alcohol, why was he not released at least into the custody of family vs sequestered away in some strange undisclosed foster home. How was doing that better and safer for him than letting him be comforted by loving and responsible relatives?
Posted by: heather at April 30, 2008 02:16 AM
I agree that CPS gravely overstepped with their reaction; however, I have to wonder if the general public would be as morally outraged if the idiotic parent in question had not been a university professor/upper-middle-class academic, but instead a single mom
on social assistance. I would like to think they would, but sadly I don't have that kind of faith in humanity.
Posted by: Saedigh at April 30, 2008 09:33 AM