As a child protective services (CPS) social worker, I routinely moved from family to family giving little thought to what happened after my work was complete.  This detachment allowed me to work in chaos for ten years, but being insulated from the emotional fallout prevented me from recognizing how my actions truly impacted the people I served. 

The systems we count on to protect our most vulnerable citizens can themselves inflict damage that extends far beyond the courtroom.  I caught glimpses of this while I was employed, but what really taught me the lesson was when I was investigated for child abuse two years after I stopped working in CPS.  We often don’t see the true suffering that’s hidden in the shadows, and sometimes I’m not sure we would care even if we did. 

A client I had previous history with was pregnant and due any day. Unfortunately, she was also in jail on theft charges and there was some concern that she was a sex worker. Her baby would be delivered while she was still incarcerated, and I needed her to sign paperwork to set up services for her family member to provide care for the child.

I arranged to meet her in the jail the day after she gave birth so that she could sign the forms. My main objective was to get the forms signed as quickly as possible and be on my way. I breezed into the jail, through the maze of corridors and locked doors, and into the area where the cells are located to wait for her in the conference room made available to us by deputies.

The mother was distraught when she came into the conference room. She had given birth the day before, and she explained that she had returned to jail from the hospital even though she wasn’t scheduled to be transferred to another jail until the day following our meeting. She sobbed and kept repeating, “I could have had one more day with my baby. I could have had one more day with my baby. I could have had one more day with my baby.”

I had allowed no time in my day for her feelings or any type of conversation beyond what I needed for the forms. I was in the county jail talking to a prostitute, and I hadn’t even taken the time to consider that she might have feelings just as valid as anyone else’s.  It never crossed my mind.  As she cried, I realized I had been in such a rush that I hadn’t even bothered to sit down. I was standing over her impatiently, focusing only on myself and my plans for my day. Suddenly realizing the power differential—a state worker looming over a vulnerable woman both figuratively and literally–I quietly slid down into a chair and told her it was going to be okay, an insufficient response for her situation.

I don’t doubt that the woman committed the crime that landed her in jail, and I won’t argue against her sentence for it. But I’m also a mother, and I imagine that the pain of that lost day with her baby lingered long after her case was resolved.  In all her subsequent court hearings, I don’t believe the loss was ever included as part of her sentence even though it was likely the toughest penalty for her crime.  I wouldn’t know for sure, though, because I never talked to her again.  I left the jail with the paperwork I needed to do the job that was assigned to me, and then I moved on to the next one. 

In a weird twist of fate, years after this interaction I was investigated by my former agency and the police because a child I provided care for was discovered to have a spiral fracture in her arm.  I participated in three interviews with an officer who was generally incompetent, often illogical, and occasionally unhinged, and who misrepresented information in his reports to convince everybody that I was guilty when I wasn’t. 

An Internal Affairs officer acknowledged to my husband—who, incidentally, is a detective—that many of the statements on audio recordings that pointed to my innocence were omitted from the initial officer’s reports.  I appreciated this admission, but also understood that it did nothing to change the damage that had already been done.  A different officer later said to me, “But you weren’t charged criminally, right?” in an attempt to argue that the system had worked as intended because I wasn’t charged with a crime I didn’t commit.  While I’m thankful that I didn’t go to prison for something I didn’t cause—and cannot even begin to imagine the pain of people who do–I suffered a multitude of consequences. When the lead detective moved on to the next thing, I was left holding the bag of chaos he had dumped in my lap. 

My body began staggering under the weight of other people’s problems and poor choices. When the toxic stress manifested in shingles, my autoimmune disease responded with joint pain and numbness in my feet and ankles so severe that I could barely walk.  Shooting nerve pain in my legs landed me in the emergency room, and so did the vertigo that left me repeatedly lying on my bathroom floor vomiting.  I was a physical disaster, and it took months to recover.

This experience was so emotionally painful that I’ve only recently been able to speak of it publicly.  I’ve lived with PTSD since I was thirteen years old and being mauled by the criminal justice and child welfare systems brought up waves of flashbacks, outbursts of anger, and rumination so overwhelming that sometimes I would sit in the dark for hours staring into space.  I’ve had my phone on silent since January 2014 because the generic cell phone ring reminds me of the investigation; it still unnerves me enough that I have to pause to collect myself when I hear it.  My husband keeps his ringer on, but he changed the ringtone for me.

I couldn’t direct my anger where it belonged, and since something of this magnitude has to go somewhere, I put it where anger usually ends up going: right on top of my spouse. We couldn’t fight back against the system, so we fought each other. The pressure during this period in our lives was so profound that sometimes I didn’t know if we were going to stay married. 

The worst consequence was how the investigation ultimately impacted my children.  Patience was overrun by bitterness, and at times I wasn’t anywhere close to the parent I wanted to be.  I was just so frustrated, and I wouldn’t fault my kids for their memories of a mother who wasn’t always compassionate or sometimes even nice. Someone else’s child had a broken arm that I didn’t cause, but my children paid the biggest price for it.

As a former CPS social worker and a current psychiatric hospital therapist, I am painfully aware (and eternally grateful) that I got off easy.  I wasn’t arrested (but only because the child’s family didn’t want me to be), I didn’t serve time in prison, and my own children weren’t removed from my care.  What happened to me is amateur hour compared to what happens to some people. 

I would jump at the chance to go back in time and make it so that this never happened to me and my family.  At the same time, I don’t ever want to lose the depth of understanding that I gained.  It’s corny and cliché to say that it made me a better person and therapist, but there’s no other way to describe it.  I don’t ever want to go back to the way I viewed the world before the investigation, and I’m not sure I could even if I tried.  Once you recognize the true consequences, you can’t unsee them.   

What used to be mildly annoying is now unbearable.  The arrogance that can manifest in some investigators is repugnant, and I can barely tolerate people who are focused on building their careers on the backs of the unfortunates.  I recoil when it feels like I’m being punched in the face by their raw ambition and self-importance.

I’m more easily frustrated when groupthink rears its ugly head and the mob starts withholding compassion from people who have admittedly made a complete mess of things. This is especially true when those passing judgment would behave in the same way (or worse) had they ever been in the same position. 

I can’t stand it when professionals create narratives about the people they serve under the guise of being noble but fail to see it as the moral superiority it actually is.  These things don’t show up in the case file, but they are what clients remember.  I don’t think it even occurs to some professionals to consider that any of this happens.

Often lost in the shuffle is the idea that we are public servants. Social workers, police officers, lawyers, judges—even therapists who work with kids in foster care—exist to serve.  Our mandate is to provide care for those who cannot care for themselves, and to do so with an attitude of humility.  How often this concept gets lost, and how tragic the consequences when it does.