When Social Services Came Calling
Twenty-three years ago, I was falsely accused of physically abusing my children. I still think about that experience.
Like anyone who’s watched TV dramas and news programs, I’ve been exposed to scenes of child welfare investigators swooping into homes and removing screaming children to protect them from parents who are abusive or mentally ill or have addictions issues or other problems that the state believes renders them incompetent.
So you can imagine my horror when I came home from a doctor’s appointment late one summer morning 23 years ago, and discovered a business card from a child welfare investigator sticking out of my mailbox. My first thought was that he must have been making social calls in the neighborhood to let us know he was around.
Then I snapped back into reality mode. Child welfare investigators go to houses for one reason: because the parents are hurting their children. But I didn’t hurt Elizabeth and Noah. I took good care of them: their teachers knew that, and so did their doctors and audiologists, and our neighbors, friends, relatives, and everybody else who saw us on a regular basis.
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Had someone overheard my husband and I arguing on Saturday morning and thought we were yelling at the kids? Had that lady who’d given me a horrified look in the shower room at the pool last week, when I’d snapped at Elizabeth for dawdling, gotten my name and called Social Services? Was someone -- I had no idea who -- so mad at me that they’d call Social Services and say I was abusing my children?
More than a half hour passed before Trevor, the investigator, returned my call. By then I’d run through every scenario possible and concluded there was no way Social Services could have a legitimate complaint about my parenting skills. But Trevor was reluctant to tell me the nature of his business.
“I’d like to come and talk to you in person,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I told him, “but you have to tell me, now, what this is about.”
He paused. “We received a report that your children have bruising,” he said.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
“All kids get bruises,” I said. “I get bruises. When I was in college I had a friend who called me a banana. My grandmother bruised easily. You can come over here and see my children and their bruises.”
But even as I said it, I couldn’t picture a single noteworthy bruise on either of my children, which only heightened my suspicion that I was the victim of an anonymous vindictive person.
It didn't take long for Trevor to arrive. He came with a female associate, Trina.
“Come in,” I said. “Come and look at my children’s bruises.” I put my hand on my three-year-old son’s shoulders and nudged him toward the social workers. My five-year-old daughter, who had decided to change into a dress, was just coming down the stairs.
“Does he have a bruise on his forehead?” Trevor asked, gesturing toward Noah.
I lifted Noah’s bangs. There was a very faint outline of a bruise. “He fell last week,” I said. “I can’t remember where or when or on what.”
I looked at our babysitter, Barbara, who had hurried the children home from a friend's house when I called about Trevor's impending visit. “I was here when he fell,” she said. “I can’t remember what happened either.”
Neither could Noah. I wondered how suspicious we looked. I remembered that Noah cried when he fell, but that was the only detail I could summon. I wondered, are there parents who document each and every cut and bruise and scrape that their children sustain? When do they have time for cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping?
I was getting carried away with my thoughts when I noticed Trevor staring at the back of Noah’s neck.
“He had something there, a rash, two weeks ago,” I said. “August 10.”
That I remembered. The kids had had swimming lessons all morning. After lunch, I debated whether to spend the afternoon taking Noah to the doctor's to find out what was wrong with his back, or taking Elizabeth to the audiologist to have her wonky right hearing aid repaired professionally.
In the end I opted for the doctor. The last time one of my kids had had a weird rash, it turned out to be scarlet fever. Besides, I’d managed to fix Elizabeth’s hearing aid and it seemed to be working, so I figured I could put that off for another day.
“I took him to the clinic,” I said. “You can talk to the doctor. He said Noah was having a bad reaction to a bug bite. I put cortisone cream on it and the doctor told me that was the right thing to do.”
I hoped he’d gotten the message: I am a good parent. When my children are ill, I make sure that they get medical attention. And my instincts regarding treatment are on target, even though the only training I have is infant and child CPR.
Trevor asked if we could talk privately. I took him to the backyard, where my pumpkin patch is threatening to overtake the deck, the sunflowers are beginning to bloom, the pansies that Elizabeth planted in May are in full flower, and the branches on the apple tree are beginning to sag under the weight of their fruit.
He interrogated me, gently, but it wasn't exactly a friendly, chatty conversation. What kind of relationship did I have with the children’s father, he asked. Did he live with us? How did the children get along with him? What did I do when the children disobeyed? Did they go to school? How did they behave generally?
I answered his questions as frankly as I could while using every bit of self-control I possessed to keep from acting indignant or insulted. The innocent parties on TV cop shows are always candid. The slightest shred of irritation would be, I was certain, a sure sign of guilt.
"They love their father," I told Trevor. "He lives with us and we have a wonderful relationship. But sometimes we fight." Heaven forbid I should make us sound too perfect – that was another sign of guilt, right up there with indignation. And then, to make sure he saw how honest I was, I told him about the loud fight Dave and I had had that Saturday morning.
“No one said anything in the report about a fight or screaming,” Trevor said, the closest he came to providing any information about my accuser.
There were times, he said, when it would be easier for him and the party being investigated if he could identify the person making the report. But that person’s privacy is protected by law.
I explained to Trevor that when my children disobey, I yell at them. “I don’t spank. I don’t believe in it. I’ve written essays about how I feel about it. You can go read them on my computer.”
As for their behavior, what parent doesn’t want to tell people -- welfare investigators or not -- that their children are perfectly behaved human beings?
“They’re great kids,” I said. “I’ve had people come up to me in restaurants — strangers — and tell me that they’re well behaved.” I didn’t care if I looked like I was exaggerating. They’re not angels all the time; both of them are capable of screams that can shatter glass. But by and large, they’re lovely children, and while I know some of that is the luck of the draw, I’d like to think it’s also a reflection of the way their dad and I are bringing them up; they know they’re loved and they feel safe, protected, secure, and happy.
“Does Elizabeth have a bruise on her thigh?” Trevor asked, shifting the subject so abruptly I was caught off guard.
Did Elizabeth have bruise on her thigh? “Yeah,” I said suddenly, remembering. It had happened more than two weeks ago. I was off to do some volunteering and I stopped up the street to say good bye to Elizabeth, who was playing outside at a friend’s house. She had a band-aid on her thigh. “She bumped herself on the swingset,” her friend’s nanny explained.
“You can go ask her friend, or her friend’s parents, or the nanny,” I said. “They live three houses up the street. You can go ask them.”
Part of me felt reassured that I had a logical and (mostly) traceable explanation for each bruise in question. But then I wondered, did the very fact that I had ready answers mark me as more suspect? Was I supposed to have such recall? Would an abuser respond this way?
We went back into the house, and Trevor talked alone to Noah and Elizabeth while Barbara and I sat in another room trying to figure out who had called Social Services. It had to have been someone who didn’t know me; anyone who knows me knows I’m not capable of hurting my children. Besides, I told Barbara, in my first feeble attempt at humor that afternoon, if someone who knew me was going to report that my children had bruises, they’d have done it years ago.
It had to have been someone at swimming lessons; whoever had made the call had been watching the kids over the past two weeks, and the only people who had seen them that regularly were people at the pool. But who?
“You’re going to have to find a way to deal with the fact that you’ll never know who made the report,” Trevor said as we stood on my front steps in the waning moments of his visit, after he’d told me he wasn’t going to open a file, that he was satisfied nothing was amiss.
That was the only advice he gave me. Over the next three days, I asked three people at swimming if they’d reported me. My friend Katie, who is also Elizabeth’s soccer coach, was shocked I’d even ask. “I’d never report you,” she said. “I think you’re a good mom.”
The swimming program administrator said she’d only called Social Services once in her 24-year career -- because a child in lessons had burn marks on his skin. The kids’ swimming teacher said she couldn’t believe anyone had reported me. After assuring me it wasn’t her, she asked if I was okay.
You could argue -- and friends did -- that whoever made the report wasn’t going to own up to it, even if I confronted them. In the first week after the Social Services visit, that didn’t matter; I was determined to ferret out my accuser. But after that I decided I didn’t care to continue what was a futile detective game.
My new plan was to tell everyone I knew what happened to me. I had an admittedly unrealistic hope that if I told enough people, word would get back to whoever called Social Services in the first place, and that person would realize just how wrong he or she was.
Also, I was looking for reassurance, and in that vein I wasn’t disappointed. Without exception, every person I told was as horrified as I. Some were furious. I hadn’t been able to conjure up that emotion, and I found it oddly comforting that others had, on my behalf.
There was a part of me that found it reassuring that people cared enough about the well-being of someone else’s children’s to report what they considered suspicious behavior. According to Trevor, about half the reports he investigated were legitimate. But there was a bigger part of me that was sickened that someone who didn’t even know me could look at my children and think that I (or my husband) was responsible for their bruises.
My husband’s theory was that people were no longer used to seeing bruises on children. “Kids spend all day inside playing Nintendo and watching DVDs and eating Doritos,” he pointed out. “They don’t get bruises anymore.”
My friend Carmel wondered if the person who turned me in was a victim of child abuse, and therefore hyper-sensitive to bruises on children. Someone else wondered if the “reporter” (the official Social Services term) was a doctor. One of the moms we saw every day at swimming was a pediatric neurologist. But I couldn’t imagine that a medical professional would so badly misjudge innocent bruises.
“We look for patterns of bruising,” said a family doctor named Rick, who I met at my niece’s birthday party a few days after Trevor and Trina came to my house. In his career, he had called Social Services once, even though he had seen many bruises and could be put into jail if one of his patients was the victim of abuse and he failed to make a report. The case he reported involved bruise marks, in the pattern of a hand, on a child’s buttocks.
I used to joke, when I got mad at Elizabeth and Noah, that Social Services was going to come after me. After Trevor and Trina’s visit, I stopped making those jokes.
The kids had two more swimming lessons after I was investigated. Everywhere I looked at the pool — everywhere I looked, period — I wondered if I was seeing the person who reported me.
“I’m a good parent,” I wanted to shout. “I don’t hurt my children. How could you even think such a thing?”
But I had no idea who to say it to. So about a week after the investigators showed up at my house, I called Trevor. I wanted to know if he was going to call the person who made the report, to tell them what he’d learned. If I’d been thinking straight when he’d come to the house, I would have asked him then.
Trevor told me that if the person who makes the report leaves a name and phone number, he will try to follow up. He didn’t say if my reporter left that information. I didn’t ask. All that I said was, “If you talk to that person, please, will you tell them, how wrong they were.”
He didn’t make a promise, and I didn’t lose sleep wondering whether he fulfilled my request. Somehow, just having asked was enough.
Post-script
I wrote this essay 23 years ago. I never found out who filed the report. But a few years ago, Neighbor A let slip that Neighbor B’s nanny had made the call, and not only that, the nanny was crazy and Neighbor B had had to fire her, in part because of what happened with me. I was shocked. I didn’t even know Neighbor B—her kids are much older than mine. And I’d had no idea she had a nanny. But Neighbor A was positive that’s who was responsible, so I worked up my nerve to ask Neighbor B. I was psyched. After more than 20 years, I was finally going to have the satisfaction of knowing who had turned me in.
When I explained why I’d knocked on her door, Neighbor B looked at me as I were crazy (ditto for Neighbor A). “No,” she said. “That never happened. I have no idea why (Neighbor B) would think that.”
“He was so certain,” I said. “And I’ve been wondering for such a long time.”
I don’t wonder so much anymore. It’s no longer a source of anxiety for me—it hasn’t been for years. Now it’s just a story.
I’m interested to know if any of you have any of you had something like this happen—if you’ve been the victim of a false accusation. I’m well aware these things can have very, very serious, negative outcomes. I’m grateful my non-case was resolved quickly.
I had a very difficult mother-in-law who was from Eastern Europe.
When I was breastfeeding my first baby, my MIL accused me of not having enough milk and starving my child! I was outraged!
She didn’t call authorities thank goodness! And she lived two states away, which was a blessing.
But years later, she called a child abduction hotline when she saw a fair-skinned child in a shopping cart being pushed by a darker-skinned woman.
I don’t remember the details — by that time, we lived even further away — but I was horrified at her actions.
As I recall, the person on the hotline was able to assure my MIL that no crime was being committed.
There are some really crazy people out there.
Debby, how terribly upsetting. I’m glad it blew over but am not at all surprised the memory lingers.