The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).
In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.
Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.
And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.
If it was one call, I’d agree with you. Better to check it out and find out it was wrong than to not check it and miss abuse. Maybe this can excuse the second and third call as well. But when you get to the 24th time, maybe the agency should be questioning whether this is a person trying to use their agency to harass the person. (The CPS version of Swatting.)
They should refer this matter to the police and have them investigate who is making these calls. Not only were they harassing a family that they’ve checked multiple times, but they are both diverting resources away from actual abuse cases and are causing the abuse that they claim to want to stop.