I am fuming with anger as I read the news today. If you haven't already heard about Josh Powell, here's the Cliff's Notes: He's suspected of having killed his wife Susan a couple of years ago. Two things that made him look particularly guilty are the fact that he's not been cooperative with police and that his alibi is pretty shaky. (He claims to have left after midnight in below-freezing weather to go camping in the desert with his two young sons.) Her purse, cell phone and car were all at home. His wife's sister ultimately reported her missing, and to date she has not been found. Josh then moved from Utah with his two boys to live with his father, Steven Powell. The latter was subsequently arrested on charges of possession of child pornography, and was found to have a large cache of photos of adult and juvenile females, Susan Powell included, taken without the subjects' knowledge. Josh himself is also named as "having involvement" with his father's case, though the exact nature of his involvement has not been released and he was not arrested. Josh moved out of his father's home, and the two children were taken from Josh's custody and given temporarily to his in-laws. He has since been in a bitter legal battle with them to regain custody, and was recently ordered to undergo psychosexual evaluation.

Today, the boys were brought to Josh's home for a supervised visit. Josh let the boys in, but then blocked the social worker from entering. Two minutes later, as the social worker was calling her supervisor, Josh allegedly blew up his own house, killing himself and his sons.

I'm sure that the question is going to arise: Could the boys have been saved? Was it right to allow them to have visitation with their father at all? I'm always torn on these issues. As a father, I would be upset if I were wrongly accused and not permitted to see my kids. On the other hand, kids are usually taken away from parents for a reason. What do you think about parental rights vs. protecting children? Are kids taken away from their parents too much? Not enough? Are there things you'd like to see change about how it works?

I'm not going to proffer an opinion at the moment, as I'm just enraged at this man.

I heard one story previously about a mother and father who took their photos to Wal-Mart to have them developed and were promptly arrested for possessing child pornography. What was in the offending picture? It was them, giving a bath to their five month old son. That was it. The ensuing legal battle to get their son back and have their names cleared took over two years.

I don't have much of an opinion on the subject right now, but that story was one that I found particularly galling.

That's the problem with issues like this. It seems sometimes, that the authorities do nothing, or next to nothing again and again in some dangerous situations, but then turn around and crucify someone else over a non-issue.

Does anyone have any idea how Child Protective Services is funded in the US? How much do they rely on local funds? Because that could account for wide geographical variations in enforcement.

I've seen this first hand. You have the obvious cases where not enough has been done on the part of CPS who turn a blind eye and the story is blown up to national, sometimes international, news. Then there are two cases that I've been particularly close to. One was my own sister. Her babysitter called on them saying my niece was claiming her dad beat them (not a stretch, but he plays rough and has never really been violent). The case was dismissed as a false claim, but that's always going to be on their records. The other was a co-worker. Her daycare called on her because her oldest is a tomboy and prefers boy-like clothes, her youngest got diaper rash easily, they acted out A LOT due to their parents being divorced and her going through boyfriends about as often as underwear, and they were behind on immunizations because Medicaid was being stupid. Yes, I know about the Medicaid because I heard the phone calls while she was at work and saw all the paperwork she faxed to them repeatedly. She was already on food stamps and CCMS, so she obviously needed help.

The issue with this case is honestly would you really see this coming? The social worker obviously started making a call, but would he/she really expect the man to blow himself up with his children? It is a very sad thing, but I really don't think there was much else that could have been done short of not allowing the man to see his kids. Since it was to be a supervised visit you wouldn't really think something would go this horribly bad.

As far as the 'is too much or not enough done' argument. It is all situational I suppose. Really not much more you can say.

I don't usually agree with Joro lock, stock, and barrel. This time, however, I'll just say ditto - the supervised visit is supposed to be a safe way to allow visitation.

I'm unclear on if he had undergone the evaluation before this happened. Is it normal to allow visits (supervised or not) if an evaluation of this sort is pending?

From what I remember reading, I believe they allow supervised visits pending evaluation. Upon completion, they will decide if visitation should be allowed at all and if so, should they continue to be supervised.

i think that, given what was known, granting visitation was iffy. Visitation at a neutral, controlled location would have made it more difficult for something like this to happen. Of course, you know what they say about hindsight.

If the man had wanted to off himself and his children in a public place, he could have easily done so by bringing a gun. A social worker is not likely to be in a position to disarm a maniac with a gun. The only way to have prevented this was to prohibit him from having visitation at all, and still that doesn't rule out his tracking them down like a stalker.

Actually this case has pretty much all of Utah pissed.

As AlternateTorg mentioned Josh Powell was the prime suspect in his wife's dissappearance.
The day she went missing he took himself and his two children, who were 5 and 2 at that time, camping at midnight, IN DECEMBER, in northern utah.

IF you know bits about Utah, that'd be grounds for child endagerment on it's own. The winters in Utah are not mild, and getting yourself trapped out in the cold with your two sons is reckless to say the least.

Following that, Josh powell refused to cooperate with police and promptly moved out of state.
At that point he had joint custody of the children.
Josh powel originally lived with his father.
When his father was found to have child pornagraphy on one of his computers, the state modified his custody to supervised visits.

This went on for quite sometime, but the about a month ago, while serving a warrrant looking for evidence related to the disappearance of his wife, the police found Josh powell was in possesion of child pornography. About a week before he blew himself up, the courts order him to undergo psycho-sexual evaluation to determine if he was a fit parent, but the courts still, at that point, did not move to take away his parental rights.

A week later, he killed the children with a hatchet and blew himself up.

This is a failure on many levels, and not just on the court's side of things; Susan Powell's parent's could have pushed for full custody pretty much at any time and they didn't.

Note this: if he'd allowed the child supervisor in, or he (or she) had forced him to let him/her in, then all that likely would have meant is that the supervisor would've gotten blown up as well. By the fact that he forbade the supervisor to come in, that tells me he'd been planning on doing this. A child supervisor is not a bomb technician, nor are they exactly qualified to take a man down when he's about to set off a bomb.

In other words, the question isn't whether letting the supervisor in would've saved the kids - rather, is there any way that the kids have been taken away before this was a threat. The problem lies with child protection services, who, quite frankly, have a very hard job when you look at it: they have the power to take children away from their parents, when their parents don't want them taken away. As such, they're bound by the laws and regulation that require proof... and if they can't get that proof, there is nothing that they can do.

Here, the main problem is that while the father looked suspicious as all hell, they still didn't have solid proof that he was mistreating his kids, or had done something with his wife. They were in the process of establishing this.

For those of you thinking that they should have done something sooner, think about this - and yes, I'm fairly sure he's guilty:

What if, in fact, he had absolutely nothing to do with his wife's disappearance? Was absolutely horrified by his own father's child pornography, or perhaps his 'involvement' in his father's case was that he, himself had been abused? Was absolutely desperate to keep his kids, despite the fact that it looked like the police and child services were out to get him? There's always a possibility that a person can be innocent. In fact, everyone is presumed innocent, that's the reason why we have the whole burden of establishing proof.

What happens then? Once again, I know it's implausible that the above is the case - generally a stable father desperate to keep his kids doesn't blow them and himself to bloody bits. Basically, to stop something like this they needed someone (Susan Powell's parents, or her sister) to be willing to fight for the kids, who had the right to fight for the kids. Then maybe child services could've done something, without having definitive proof. But without that...

Ignoring his lack of cooperation with police and his implausible alibi, he very well may have acted just as an innocent man would have right up until the point the house exploded. In fact an innocent man may have also been uncooperative and have a poor alibi.

Plus, unfortunately cooperating completely with authorities is no guarantee that said authorities will play nice. I've had a friend cooperate completely with police, who was not guilty, and still got screwed. I've also had a friend basically tell the police off, who was guilty, who got away scot free.