Wounded Innocents

by Richard Wexler

The war against child abuse has become a war against children. Every year, hundreds of children die, thousands more are forced to live with strangers, and countless American families are torn apart. This is called a "child-protection system."While the problem of child abuse is serious and real, journalist Richard Wexler charges that our solutions to the problem have actually made it worse - in fact, hurting the very children that they were intended to help.Wexler reinforces his arguments with horrifying descriptions of children summarily removed from their homes, of families shattered because of false reports, and of children whose parents are guilty of nothing more than poverty being thrust into the maelstrom of the chaotic foster-care program. He writes of severly abused children - those needing the most help - whose cases are ignored because the system diverts scarce resources to trivial or unfounded cases, and who are reinjured, sometimes fatally after their plight has been called to the attention of authorities.Wounded Innocents illustrates how well-meaning efforts to help children have gone terribly wrong and how the current child-protection system desperately needs to be replaced with one that offers real help and real hope to abused and neglected children.

434 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1990

Reviews

[Susan Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an insightful look into a governmental bureaucratic nightmare - I can attest to it's accurate portrayal since my family's story is told on pages 125-130.

[Taylor Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very heavily against CPS, and actually excuses abuse by poor parents as caused by stress. It acts as though all CPS workers are power-hungry heartless women, but all parents are just innocent victims. It's actually pretty ridiculous, and points to a lot of things more than 50 years ago as examples of how the system ran in the 90's. A lot of the points made are literally the flipside of arguments made against CPS, leaving it at least a little hypocritical.

[Mariejkt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and informative book.