Iowa is no different from every other state that imagines child abuse everywhere they look. Except Iowa is more innovative. Given the popularity of sex offender registries throughout the country, Iowa has instituted a child abuse registry, but they decided this registry is too important to allow the courts to hinder it with inconvenient demands for due process:
It takes no conviction in court to end up on the registry – only a finding by Iowa Department of Human Services staff that it was “more likely than not” that the person neglected a child or, in a much smaller number of cases, abused a child.
Of course, state agencies, with their act first and ask questions later approach to child protection, have established reputation for harming children almost as bad as the accused child abusers themselves. It’s no wonder that the credibility of the child abuse registry is being questioned:
Iowa’s 51,960-name child abuse registry could get an overhaul in the wake of complaints that the list damages reputations and job prospects for the accused before they’ve had a fair hearing.
“There are too many innocent people on that registry list,” said Rep. Bruce Hunter, D-Des Moines. “This isn’t about letting people guilty of child abuse off the hook. Those people shouldn’t be anywhere around children.”
So, Iowa DHS is willing to smear people without due process, effectively denying them employment in their career, and encouraging future persecution of them all in the name of protecting children?
Nice work Iowa. How much longer before you start crucifying citizens on Main Street to set an example to others that, when it comes to protecting children, you are willing to destroy as many innocent people as it takes?
But Dave, don’t you know that it’s good and moral to steamroller the rights and destroy the lives of tens of thousands of people, including thousands of children, if it saves even ONE SINGLE CHILD from even the remotest possibility of suffering the slightest degree of harm, intentional or accidental, at the hands of an individual? Of course, abuse and harm inflicted by state and federal agencies is perfectly OK.
As Maggie clearly points about above, this is one of the cases in which American law does not abide by the old American custom of doing a cost-benefit analysis. How many children are harmed by this policy vs. how many children are saved — doesn’t this number count for anything when deciding to adopt such a policy?
This curious human propensity to do what is worst for us in the name of what is best for us deserves a book.
The kids injured by the state in the name of protecting kids don’t count. Remember Waco? The justification for the siege against the Branch Davidians was to save the children inside (all of whom were ultimately killed in the process of saving them).
The magnitude of the idiocy wielded by government is stunning.