The most important obligation the State of Colorado has to its citizens is the protection, safety, and wellbeing of our children. The Division of Child Welfare under Colorado’s Department of Human Services (CDHS) is a collection of agencies & departments that have primary responsibility for protecting our children. At this juncture, we are focused on Child Protective Services (CPS).
There are bad people, too often bad parents, moms and dads, that harm their own children. Physical abuse of a child should never happen.
Circumstances and situations involving child abuse and neglect are often complicated with other issues of mental health, addictions, and child caught in the middle of their parents’ conflict. Specifically, during times of divorce, separation, and or contested custody.
The underlying issue in CPS, as it is in domestic violence (DV), is that policies, practices, programs, and funding addresses child abuse as a single gender issue. That men are looked upon primarily as perpetrators and women are only seen as protective mothers.
However, data from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) clearly shows that child abuse is perpetrated by both genders, moms and dads. In fact, a 2019 CDC report showed the females were perpetrators in 53% (278,450) of child abuse cases as compared to 46% (241,957) of males perpetrators.
More startling in that same report was the fact that when children lost their lives at the hands of a parent, 71% (584) lost their lives to the hands of their mother and or her new partner. Compare this to 29% (238) who lost their life to their father and or his new partner.
No doubt, much of society has the same misinformed belief that men are more abusive than women. That false narrative has been fed to us for decades. Combine these beliefs and biases with the reality that case workers, social workers, and most who work in these systems are women, and it’s easy to understand why CPS is so sexist and anti-father.
The two biggest problems extending from a sexist CPS systems are false allegations of child abuse and parental alienation (PA). Both are pervasive in contested custody and both are ignored in CDHS policy. False allegations are commonly made as a premeditated strategy to gain an advantage in a custody battle. False allegations are extreme examples of PA, child abuse, and DV.
PA is child psychological abuse. PA is where an abusive parent manipulates a child to hinder, alienate, or sever their child’s relationship with the targeted parent. It happens on a spectrum from undermining the others authority in the eyes of the child to the complete loss of a parent-child relationship. Suicide for the child and or targeted parent is too often the tragic outcome of severe PA.
CDHS must address false allegations and parental alienation (PA) in policy to properly protect all children from child abuse. Until CDHS recognizes that child abuse is an issue where moms and dads can be victims and perpetrators, more children will be abused because CPS failed to protect them.
