LATE IN 2019, the Massachusetts Legislature created a commission to study mandatory child abuse reporting. Like all states, Massachusetts requires most professionals who deal regularly with children to report any suspicion of child abuse or neglect. 

The commission was chaired by Maria Mossaides, head of the state Office of the Child Advocate. For well over a year the commission heard only those Mossaides wanted them to hear. But at the very end of the process, with a set of draft recommendations to expand mandatory reporting ready for a vote, the commission held its only public hearing.

Experts from all over the country warned the commission that it was on the wrong track. They joined Massachusetts advocates in describing how mandatory reporting has backfired, traumatizing countless children and families and deluging the system with false reports, stealing time from finding children in real danger. 

Commission members said they were “shocked” “surprised” and “taken aback.”  They rebelled. The commission made no recommendations at all.

Now, Mossaides is at it again. In a recent commentary piece for CommonWealth Beacon, she misrepresents the history of Massachusetts child welfare and the views of anyone who disagrees with her. Her views are so extreme that she would even effectively silence the voices of the children she says she wants to protect.

“I’ve witnessed the pendulum swing back and forth, alternating between a focus on removing children from harmful environments and an emphasis on keeping families together at all costs,” Mossaides writes.

Here’s what she’s not telling you.

In 2021, the most recent year for which comparative data are available, Massachusetts took children from their families at a rate 70 percent above the national average, when rates of child poverty are factored in. That’s nothing new. Massachusetts has been an extreme outlier for decades.

In Massachusetts, the pendulum swings only from taking away too many children to taking away far too many children.

But Mossaides doesn’t stop there. In her commentary, she smears anyone who disagrees, claiming we believe in “keeping families together at all costs.” 

On the contrary, those of us who oppose Massachusetts’s take-the-child-and-run extremism know that, for the overwhelming majority of children, family preservation is not just the more humane option, it’s also the safer option.

For starters, there is the enormous emotional trauma inherent in removal.  Think back to the children torn from their families at the Mexican border. Listen again to their cries. Though caseworkers for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families almost always mean well, a child taken from a parent in Massachusetts sheds the same tears for the same reasons.

So it’s no wonder that study after study finds that in typical cases children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care. And that includes cases where the issue is substance use.

The more you overload a system with children who don’t need to be there, the greater the temptation to lower standards and ignore abuse in foster care. So it’s no wonder independent studies find abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes – a rate far higher than in official figures, which involve agencies like DCF investigating themselves. 

The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even higher, and Massachusetts uses such places at a rate more than 60 percent above the national average. What really endangers children is the Massachusetts mentality of family destruction at all costs.

Massachusetts’s record for racial bias in child welfare also is worse than the national average. Black children represent 9 percent of the Massachusetts child population and 14 percent of the foster care population. Nationwide, Hispanic children are not in foster care at a disproportionate rate. But in Massachusetts, they are in foster care at a rate 80 percent above their rate in the general population. Did all the “bad” Hispanic parents migrate to Massachusetts? Or does Massachusetts child welfare have a racism problem far worse than Mossaides lets on?

After years of invoking the worst horror stories to steamroller lawmakers into doing her bidding, Mossaides acknowledges that most cases don’t involve physical or sexual abuse – the accusation is neglect. But she then misrepresents neglect, claiming that “A large proportion of neglect cases involve parents struggling with substance use disorder and/or serious mental illness in ways that can put their child at serious risk of harm.”

Again, the data tell a different story. In 63 percent of the cases in which Massachusetts foster children are consigned to the chaos of foster care, there is not even an allegation of substance abuse. And, though Mossaides wants you to envision strung-out parents overdosing in front of their kids, these, too, are horror stories as rare as they are real. 

And in a state where suburban “cannamoms” — mothers who use, and sometimes seem dependent on marijuana to cope with the stresses of raising their children — can be celebrateed in a Boston Magazine cover story without fear of DCF showing up on the doorstep, you have to wonder who really is targeted and why.

No, a large proportion of neglect cases involve poverty. That means things aren’t as complicated as Mossaides wants us to believe. The solution can be as simple as small amounts of money to ameliorate the worst effects of that poverty.

Perhaps most alarming is Mossaides current campaign to effectively silence children in court. Before – and sometimes only after — DCF removes children, the agency has to go to court for approval. A judge ultimately will decide if the children will stay in foster care, go home, or lose the right to live with their parents forever. All parties have lawyers.

But Mossaides wants to change the role of children’s lawyers. She wants them to decide what they think is in children’s “best interests” and push for that – even if it means fighting against their own clients. It also means that overwhelmingly middle-class, disproportionately white lawyers will somehow determine what is “best” for children who are neither, adding still another layer of bias.

The better approach is the current approach in Massachusetts. Children’s lawyers are mandated to do what any other lawyer does: fight for what their clients want. Does that mean the child should always get it? Of course not. But deciding what’s best is what judges are for. Sometimes judges will get it wrong.  But the best chance to get it right comes when all sides have vigorous advocates seeking their desired outcome.

What Mossaides is offering is more of the same – an endless cycle of tragedy, knee-jerk response, and more tragedy. Massachusetts lawmakers should pick up where the Mandatory Reporter Commission left off and closely question her assumptions. But they should be prepared to be shocked, surprised and taken aback.

Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.