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A fortnight ago on these pages, Al Knight explained one oddity of the C. Harry Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
At fund-raising time, it's the poor orphan Kempe Center, needful of your contributions so that it can continue its work.
But when that work results in lawsuits filed by innocent people whose lives and careers have been destroyed by the Kempe Center -- well, then, the Kempe Center is an official agency of the State of Colorado, and therefore immune to such lawsuits.
Why might someone want to sue the Kempe Center?
Last January, twin 4-year-old girls both attended the Strawberry Door pre-school in Salida. They seemed upset and nervous, and one told tales of occasionally being removed by a staff member, without parental consent.
The girl said they went to a place called the
shop,
where they played games. Sometimes she took a
bath there.
Such allegations should be investigated. The girls' mother connected with the Chaffee County Department of Social Services, which in turn asked the Salida Police Department to conduct an investigation.
After extensive interviews, the police turned up nothing to support the little girl's story. The District Attorney's office agreed.
Based on my own knowledge of Strawberry Door, I'd agree. One of our daughters went there when Martha and I both toiled at the local newspaper, and although she was supposed to be in pre-school until 5 p.m., sometimes one of us would get off early and go pick her up.
Our daughter was always there. Ditto for all the other parents I know. How could you sneak kids out of a pre-school when their parents might show up at any time? Salida is a gossippy little town, and if a child and a staff member had been AWOL even once, such shocking news would have spread all over town before sundown.
But a police and DA investigation weren't enough for our county Social Services Department, which sent the girls and their mother and step-father to the Kempe Center.
There the girls received thorough physical examinations,
which showed no indication of physical or sexual abuse.
They also met with Clare Haynes-Seman, PhD, associate
director of pediatrics and director of the family
evaluation team, who conducted non-directed play
interviews
with each twin.
I asked some friends in the psychology trade about such
interviews. Usually it means you put a kid in a room
with a couple of dolls, and you watch. But if it's truly
non-directed, you could be watching for hours, maybe
months, before you get any insights.
Another said this might indicate a child had been
exposed to something traumatic, but it certainly couldn't
tell you where or when or who did it.
Nonetheless, Haynes-Seman concluded that the girls had
been removed from school without written permission of
the parents
and had been taking baths when taken
from the school premises.
Remember, the police found no
evidence that the girls had ever left the premises without
consent.
From this report, our county social services director,
Bob Christiansen, decided that Andy Kahan, administrator of
Strawberry Door, had engaged in grossly improper
conduct.
Christiansen also dispatched department investigators to pull Kahan's children out of their public-school classrooms and interrogate them behind closed doors.
Kahan's name ended up on the state registry of
confirmed
child abusers. He fought it, and his name
was removed after a couple of months.
Now, if anybody was abused in all this, it was the Kahan family, not the 4-year-old girl. Our system dragged an innocent person's name through the mud and tried to deprive Andy Kahan of his livelihood. He will never fully recover the good reputation he had before last January.
If I as a journalist had published such tales about someone, based on the babbling of a 4-year-old child and how that child played with dolls, and in contradiction to all other evidence, I'd be sued for libel or worse. And deservedly so.
But the Kempe Center did this, and the Strawberry Door is not, alas, a unique case.
It could happen to you, and you'd be effectively found
guilty of a loathsome crime -- without benefit of trail,
without a chance to see the evidence,
without a jury
of your peers, without due process. Instead of being
innocent until proven guilty, you'd be guilty until you
could prove your innocence, and there's no real mechanism
for that.
The Kempe Center apparently wants to exercise that kind of absolute power to ruin innocent people, without fear of supervision in the form of lawsuits from people who have been abused by the Kempe Center.
If the Kempe Center is a state agency, then acts in our name when it tramples over traditional American notions of evidence and justice.
Is it too much to ask that our state government, when it acts to protect children from sexual abuse, also avoid abusing innocent citizens?
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