At the Parents Advocacy and Rights conference in Edinburgh in November 2018, I was sitting at a table with a few other women who talked about their bitter experiences with the child removal system. One woman remarked, ‘I started to doubt myself’, adding that she had started to wonder whether she really was a bad mother. Another woman echoed this, saying that she also had had such feelings.
The term ‘witch-hunt’ has been applied to similar modern phenomena, most prominently to McCarthyism. Reading Federici’s Caliban and the Witch, I was struck by the resemblance of the post-medieval European witch-hunt to the child removal system. They have several features in common, along with obvious and not-so obvious differences.
But what struck me the most was the parallel between the accused witches’ confessions and these contemporary women’s self-doubt. (Again, there are parallels with self-accusation and brainwashing in the context of other ‘witch-hunts’.) For even though, just as death at the stake was the worst thing done to the witch, the removal of children was the worst thing done to the social-work victim, the thing that inspired my most violent rage was the second worst thing − and that was the social workers’ determination, and power, to turn victimized mothers against themselves, enforcing inner compliance at every stage in those unfortunate enough to become social-work ‘clients’.
Here are the features common to the two forms of persecution, with differences noted where relevant.
1. The victims are mostly poor women.
Federici tells us (2014: 171):
‘…the majority of those accused were poor peasant women … while those who accused them were wealthy and prestigious members of the community … who were part of the local power structures…. Only as the persecution progressed, and the fear of witches (as well as the fear of being accused of witchcraft, or of “subversive association”) was sowed …, did accusations also come from neighbors. In England, the witches were usually old women on public assistance or women who survived by going from house to house begging ….’
In our own context, research has found that ‘Poverty was the biggest single factor behind wide inequalities in child safeguarding interventions that see one in 60 children taken into care in the most deprived areas, compared with one in 660 in the wealthiest areas’ (Butler 2017). Moreover, while social workers regularly present the connection in terms of the strain put on families by poverty – thus implying, though in pseudo-sympathetic terms, that poor people are more likely to neglect or abuse their children − the Child Welfare Inequality project, conducted by academics from English, Scottish, and Northern Irish universities, places at least equal responsibility on the authorities:
‘The research called on ministers to take action to minimise wide variations in demand for child protection services, which had a similar effect to health and education inequalities in terms of the long-term consequences for a child’s health and wellbeing in later life.
‘It said: “Placing children on child protection plans or taking children into care are very powerful state actions. If these powers are carried out inconsistently or inequitably between children with different identities or backgrounds or from different places, important issues of social justice are raised.”’
As alleged recently of the child protection system: ‘“Charges of neglect are used to punish, especially single-mother families, for their unbearably low incomes. …”' (Lavelle 2017)
In fact, the Scottish Government, through its numerous ‘risk indicators’, encourages social workers to target poor and otherwise disadvantaged or disapproved-of families. The indicators include, for example: ‘Neighbourhood characterised by poverty’, ‘Financial difficulties’, ‘Housing quality poor’, ‘Single parent household’, ‘More than four children in the family’, ‘Asylum seeking child’, ‘English is not first language of child’ (Scottish Government 2012).
2. A moral panic is created around the issue.
‘Before neighbor accused neighbor, or entire communities were seized by a “panic”, a steady indoctrination took place, with the authorities publicly expressing anxiety about the spreading of witches’ (Federici 2014: 166). Moreover, ‘The witch-hunt was also the first persecution in Europe that made use of a multi-media propaganda to generate a mass psychosis among the population. Alerting the public to the dangers posed by the witches … was one of the first tasks of the printing press’ (ibid.: 168).
In our own time, the Guardian reports:
‘Nearly 19,500 calls reporting child neglect were dealt with by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the last 12 months. The charity said a growing number of callers were concerned about children, some under the age of five, being left at home unsupervised by parents struggling with alcohol and drug use.
‘However, it warned the true scale of the problem could be “much greater” and urged the government to commission a national study to measure the extent of the problem.’ (Sandeman 2017)
There’s a certain circularity in the finding that ‘nearly nine in 10 calls [proved] serious enough to be referred to social services or the police’ (Sandeman 2017). With the charity looking for neglect and abuse, and no family being perfect, it would not be difficult for investigators following up neighbours’ or relatives’ complaints to reason ‘If it’s worth reporting, it must be worth referring to the authorities’, and go on to find supportive evidence.
Difference: There’s no such thing as witchcraft, but there are child neglect and abuse. So, while the witch-hunters’ moral panic was based on a myth, that of the social workers is based on exaggeration, with atrocities like the Peter Connelly case invoked to justify ever more frequent child removal on ever more insubstantial grounds.
3. Accusations are encouraged.
‘After 1550, laws and ordinances making witchcraft a capital crime and inciting the population to denounce suspected witches, were also passed in Scotland, Switzerland, France, and the Spanish Netherlands’ (Federici 2014: 166).
In our own context,
‘The Department for Education, which has been running a campaign to encourage more people to report instances of child abuse and neglect, said the government was investing £8m in the Childline service and giving £20m to the National Crime Agency to tackle online child sexual exploitation.
‘A spokeswoman said: “We are helping to make sure people feel confident about reporting abuse and neglect through our national awareness campaign….”’ (Sandeman 2017)
Towards the end of the persecution, ‘In France, too, the final wave of trials brought widespread social disorder: servants accused their masters, children accused their parents, husbands accused their wives’ (Federici 2014: 205).
Today, accusations against parents can be sought by indirect methods. Under the Scottish Government’s Realigning Children’s Services programme, children are invited to report on their upbringing and their parents’ behaviour on school questionnaires which, although theoretically optional, ‘“are being presented to children as a compulsory class activity, with only the boldest youngsters feeling able to hold out against their teachers”’ (Deborah Thomas, campaigner quoted in Preuss, 2017). Apart from children’s reticence, any opt-outs, or replies indicating deviation from the government’s criteria of perfection, are likely to bring social workers to the family’s door, since according to Falkirk Council, ‘“This survey isn’t compulsory and children/parents and carers can drop out at anytime, but it does allow them to tell us what their real needs are so we can deliver services that help them’” (quoted in Preuss 2017).
4. As a result, there is a fear of being accused.
Federici (p. 171) refers to ‘the fear of witches (as well as the fear of being accused of witchcraft, or of “subversive association”)’.
Parents today are terrified of a child’s having to be treated for an accidental injury or unexplained illness, or of his/her getting into trouble at school or nursery: any problem that may turn the dreaded gaze of the social worker onto the family.
5. There is no fair trial.
‘… the jurists, the magistrates, and the demonologists … perfected a legal machine that, by the end of the 16th century, gave a standardized, almost bureaucratic format to the trials, accounting for the similarities of the confessions across national boundaries’ (Federici 2014: 168).
As an example of the format,
‘In Germany, torture was part of the established trial procedure and could legally last for days on end. … Suspects were tortured until they confessed their participation in evil magic and sex with the devil, and named the other women they had seen at the supposed witches' sabbat. Many trial officials had lists of questions to elicit responses which would conform to established beliefs about witchcraft. Dr. Carl Ellwangen began his inquisitions by asking the accused to recite the Lord's Prayer. Then he immediately asked them who seduced them into witchcraft, how the seduction occurred, why they gave in, what it was like to have sex with the devil, and so on.’ (Sharratt, 2011)
The fairness of the trials may be further gauged by the atmosphere in which they took place. For instance,
‘In Scotland, with the Synod of Aberdeen (1603), the ministers of the Presbyterian Church were ordered to ask their parishioners … if they suspected anyone of being a witch. Boxes were placed in the churches to allow the informers to remain anonymous; then, after a woman had fallen under suspicion, the minister exhorted the faithful from the pulpit to testify against her and forbid anyone to give her help (Black, 1971: 13).’ (Federici 2014: 166)
In such an atmosphere, accusation equals conviction. No wonder that, as Sharratt (2011) summarizes it: ‘Once a witch was brought to trial, she was doomed’.
This last sentiment, in the child-removal context, was echoed by a lawyer, as reported by a social work victim:
‘“My barrister told me that if social services wanted your kids you had no
chance. He said they had more power than the police and the judge...well she
was just there to make the whole thing look ... you know … fair”’. (Julie, quoted in Sanders 2012, p. 55)
In proceedings over adoption, according to Ryburn (1992a: 42, quoted in Sanders 2012: 30) ‘“the dice are so heavily weighted against birth parents that they almost invariably lose in courts”’.
The fact that, in today’s child protection hearings, only civil, not criminal, standards of proof – that is, only the balance of probabilities, rather than proof beyond reasonable doubt – are required, means that parents are unprotected against social workers’ assessments. While criminal defendants, like accused parents, are automatically disadvantaged, people still know that the police can be wrong and that there can be miscarriages of justice; but those who criticize social workers are apt to be dismissed as malcontents or as indifferent to child abuse. There’s a class aspect to this, in that police officers, correctly or incorrectly, are seen as working-class, while social workers enjoy the godlike status of ‘professionals’.
6. The persecution is a strategy of the state in pursuit of the ruling class’s socio-economic ideology.
Although we may think of the witch-hunt as a product of religious zealotry, Federici (2014: 166) observes that ‘after the mid-16th century, … the initiative for the persecution passed from the Inquisition to the secular courts’. Describing it as ‘class war carried out by other means’ (176), she links it to ‘the explosion of urban and rural revolts’ at the time (174), and to the need to instil the emerging capitalist work-discipline, e.g. through vicious ‘vagrancy’ laws. For in that era, the work-discipline had not yet been internalized as it is today, so that ‘skivers’ were quite unapologetic about it; indeed, ‘the hatred for wage-labor was so intense that many proletarians preferred to risk the gallows, rather than submit to the new conditions of work (Hill 1975: 219-39)’ (Federici 2014: 136). The organization of work was further supported by rationalist philosophy as against the belief in magic embodied in alleged witchcraft, and to the suppression of women in preparation for their subjugated role in the capitalist wage-labour economy.
Today’s child-removal system, carried out by the state which prescribes it and licenses social workers to implement it, is similarly linked to enforcement of the capitalist work-ethic through the demonization of the unwaged and precariously waged. It’s the final brick in the construction of the underclass, the various images associated with which include ‘council tenant … uneducated … unemployed … ASBOs … “troubled families” … benefit cheats … drugs … feral children’ and ultimately (‘Well, it’s not surprising, is it?’) … ‘kids taken off her’. The similar US system contributes to the image the notions of ‘culture of poverty’ and ‘welfare queens’. In turn, social workers reinforce this image by preying mainly on the poor.
7. Confessions = forced inner compliance
Illustrating the male supremacist doctrines prevailing at the time of the witch-hunt, Federici writes: ‘The sexual politics of the witch-hunt is revealed by the relation between the witch and the devil, which is one of the novelties introduced by the 16th and 17th-century trials’ (2014: 186). Compared to earlier, more varied images, the devil was seen as a husband, and ‘the witches would confess that they “did not dare to disobey the devil,” or … did not find any pleasure in their copulations with him’ (187-88).
In the 17th-century East Anglian witchcraft trials, ‘Alleged witches were detained, interrogated, sleep deprived and tortured until they offered a satisfactory confession’ (Eaton, 2016). These confessions echoed the moral and superstitious preoccupations of the time, sex being a common theme: ‘When frightened and under duress, the women who confessed witchcraft offered narratives about demonic sex. Their vernacular language of sin was wrapped in sexuality’, as mentioned above re ‘sex with the devil’.
Federici disputes Foucault’s psychological view of such narratives:
‘The “discursive explosion” on sex, that Foucault detected in this time, was in no place more powerfully exhibited than in the torture chambers of the witch-hunt. But it had nothing in common with the mutual titillation that Foucault imagines flowing between the woman and her confessor. … the stage upon which this particular discourse on sex unfolded was the torture chamber … and by no stretch of imagination can we presume that the orgy of words the women thus tortured were forced to utter incited their pleasure or re-oriented, by linguistic sublimation, their desire.’ (191-92).
A mixed account is offered by Levack (n.d.): ‘Very few people accused of witchcraft confessed voluntarily in early modern Europe, and there is no evidence that the historical Anne Pedersdotter did so’ he writes, in his review of the film Days of Wrath, based on the Pedersdotter case. ‘But’, he continues, ‘those few witches who did confess freely usually did so after they became convinced that they had the special powers attributed to them.’ This is what happens to Anne in the film, due to her guilt over her affair and having indirectly caused her husband’s death.
I was reminded of Anne’s weary despair as she condemns herself to the flames with her confession at the end of Day of Wrath, when I read a social-worker-worshipping account of a woman’s relinquishment of her children:
‘Tiffany's new baby girl was also taken into care, but by then she and Mike had split up after a violent row.
‘Eight months after social workers first got involved, Tiffany made a major decision – to give her children up for adoption. "They'll be able to get the better care that they need," she explained in tears.’ (BBC, 2012)
Today’s ‘child protection’ interrogators avoid physical torture, although sleep deprivation undoubtedly accompanies the complete loss of autonomy and privacy inherent in ‘intervention’, and the knowledge that your children are likely to be taken from you. And this likelihood is strongly linked to the degree of your resistance, in any form, to social work intervention.
Forrester, Westlake and Glynn (2012) write:
‘Indeed, in the programme of research carried out for the government in the early 1990s, it was noted that if parents seemed to want help and to be open about their problems it was unusual for them to receive local authority social work input – such families tended to be referred to non-statutory family support services (Department of Health 1995). Child protection work is thus largely focused on families that are resistant to or at least ambivalent about social work involvement.’
The authors’ interpretation of this fact is that cooperation is a sign of good parenting; they are incapable of seeing it the other way around, namely, that social workers are more likely to deem adequate those parents who completely submit to them.
Here are some of the Scottish Government’s ‘resistance risk indicators’, used to damn recalcitrant parents:
‘Resistance Indicators − Parent/Carer
Threatening workers (physical/verbal)
No recognition of the problems
Has a different perception of the problems/risks
Only recognizes some professional concerns
No/limited/tokenistic capacity for change
Parent/carer overwhelmed with situation
Gives different information to different workers
Says right things – not backed by behaviour/actions
Past negative relationships with professionals
No/limited awareness of impact of own behaviour
Lacks understanding of what is expected of them
Actively disrupts professional plans and actions.’ (Scottish Government 2012)
Of these 12 ‘indicators’, 5 directly refer to the person’s state of mind: ‘recognition’, ‘recognizes’ ‘perception’, ‘awareness’, ‘understanding’, and one refers, similarly, to ‘negative relationships with professionals’.
Edinburgh Council’s rules for parents undergoing the torture of supervised contact with children who have been taken from them are all geared towards similar brainwashing; I highlight the key phrases.
‘Treats and presents should not be encouraged …. The level of support required to maintain contact should be reviewed to ensure that parents have a clear understanding of the efforts they need to make themselves to fulfill their parental responsibilities.
‘Parents will need support to understand what is expected of them during contact. … Others may express strong feelings of anger and frustration and may need time and support to be able to begin to see things from the child’s perspective. ‘ (Edinburgh Council 2014: 38)
‘should not just detail whether the parent attends contact within the agreed plan, but more importantly their state of mind, their ability to greet the child appropriately, to manage themselves, to stay calm and focused on the child throughout contact and to help the child separate without overwhelming them with their distress. Contact should enable parents to build up their understanding of their child’s needs and their skills in responding to them.’ (ibid.: 42)
‘When plans on permanence have been agreed which include proposals to significantly reduce or terminate contact there may be merit in arranging a facilitated contact, to help support the birth parent in explaining the reasons for this with the child. … This … affirms to the child that the birth parent takes responsibility for these circumstances. Where a child is no longer returning to the care of birth parents and the parents are in conflict with the plan they may be unable to participate safely in contact.’ (ibid.: 44)
When the ‘birth parent takes responsibility for these circumstances’, it amounts to a confession of guilt wrung from the parent as a condition of having any future contact at all with the child.
The term ‘support’ is constantly used to describe the coercion of the parent. And fortunately for the social workers, research has been done to help them in their often discouraging task.
In ‘Parental resistance and social worker skills: towards a theory of motivational social work’ (Forrester, Westlake and Glynn 2012), the commitment to the task of instilling self-doubt in parents is unimpaired by any self-doubt on the part of the authors. Nowhere is it suggested that the parent’s resistance might be justified: the intervention or child removal has already been legally sanctioned, albeit by a procedure far short of a fair trial, so the parent’s objections carry no more weight than a convicted prisoner’s insistence on his innocence. Nor is it even remotely suggested that the attempt to ‘overcome resistance’ might be an infringement of the person’s right to think her own thoughts and feel, still less express, her own emotions.
The article sometimes shows understanding of the reasons for resistance, but only to help the social worker overcome it, not to legitimate it. Examples of such understanding are:
‘Resistance from parents to social workers is not simply a function of the parent’s psychopathology or the fact they are “difficult”. It is a complex – and ultimately understandable – response to the situation the parent finds him or herself in.’ (Forrester et al. 2012)
‘…the nature of a meeting between parent and social worker creates a context in which the social worker holds more power in the relationship (see Rees 1975 for a classic discussion of such issues). The context of child protection involvement is therefore in itself likely to create resistance.’ (ibid.)
A radical perspective is expressed:
‘The vast majority of social work clients have experienced discrimination, oppression and disadvantage, and this can often be a factor that shapes their relationship with a social worker….
‘Such considerations have shaped much of the radical tradition in social work, as well as the general acceptance of the importance of working in “anti-discriminatory” and “anti-oppressive” ways that is now embedded at the heart of social work in the UK (see Rees 1975; Dominelli 1988; Thompson 2002). The great strengths of this tradition have been identifying the complex nature of power, oppression and discrimination, and the importance of social workers having a critical awareness of such issues.’
But this perspective is assigned to the task of manipulation:
‘It is argued below that anti-discriminatory practice has had less to say about the communication skills involved in working in an empowering way, particularly in child protection work.’ (Forrester et al. 2012)
The inescapable contradiction embedded in the structure of social work is seen as a ‘challenge’ for the skillful manipulator to meet − and through motivational interviewing, to overcome:
‘Ferguson provides an exceptionally thoughtful and helpful discussion of these issues, exploring the challenges of putting a rhetoric of “empowerment” and “partnership” into practice with often uncooperative and sometimes hostile families’ (ibid.)
Of particular relevance to the client’s confession is the presence of shame, ambivalence and/or lack of confidence as elements in resistance. These forms of self-doubt are portrayed as possible obstacles to overcoming resistance, thus as bad things – but recognizing them is part of the job of instilling the ultimate self-doubt that accepts the social worker’s view of things.
Ultimately, it’s the skill of the manipulator that determines success in overcoming resistance:
'...there has been insufficient attention paid to the micro-skills involved in working with resistant clients. This is a key failing because social worker behaviour can itself be an important contributor to parental resistance.' (ibid.)
'... the barriers to a client's engagement can be reinforced when social workers do not ask the parent what their views and opinions are on their own situation, whether they are entirely believed or not'. (Platt 2008, quoted in Forrester et al., my emphasis)
‘The key skills associated with reducing resistance are those involved in skilled listening. Workers who seem respectful and empathic, and who use open questions and reflective statements in order to check their understanding regularly seem to create less resistance; those who take the position of the expert, who try to argue or persuade the client to change, or who are explicitly confrontational tend to create greater resistance from clients.’ (Forrester et al. 2012, my emphasis)
Also recommended are
‘the use of open questions, affirmation of positives and the use of reflections (here reflections refer to statements by the listener that try to represent their understanding of the parent’s views). Reflective statements are perhaps the most important communication skill within MI, in part because they attempt to demonstrate one’s understanding of the client’s viewpoint.’
‘Engaging parents shares the fundamental characteristics of resolving ambivalence about behaviour change; indeed, at root it is a form of behaviour change. The behaviour that the social worker aims to change is the parent’s reaction to social workers.’ (ibid., my emphasis)
Thus, the parent who is handled skillfully, with empathy, listening, avoidance of open confrontation etc., is brought to the condition where 'I started to doubt myself'.
8. Argument
Forrester and colleagues (2012) explain, quite blandly and unself-consciously, that ‘working with resistance epitomizes the psychosocial nature of social work activity. … working effectively with resistance therefore takes us to the heart of good social work’. But this avowed project of breaking the parent’s spirit is presented as helpful rather than adversarial. ‘It is both anti-discriminatory practice in action and effective help for individuals with serious personal problems.’
And to be considered helped, the person is required to ‘change’, either through submitting to all the social worker’s behavioural and lifestyle conditions in the hope of keeping her child during, and after, years of total control of the family’s life through supervision; or if these efforts should be deemed inadequate, through accepting the life-wrecking loss of her child to fostering or adoption, with (as per Edinburgh Council 2014) concealment of her distress a condition of having any further, even limited and controlled, contact with the child thereafter.
During these processes, she must not only behave as instructed, but must also, as per Scottish Government (2012), avoid having ‘a different perception of the problems/risks’, or showing ‘limited awareness of impact of own behaviour’. When declaring her newly acquired correct perception, and displaying awareness of her bad behaviour, she must avoid ‘say[ing] right things – not backed by behavior/actions’ – because it’s not good enough to confess your sins: you must mean it.
You must start to doubt yourself.
Being turned against oneself could serve as a definition of mental illness. When the state induces this condition in someone, it is committing an assault as severe as any physical one, its practice of ‘overcoming resistance’ being more humane both in method and in professed intent than the witch-hunters’ tortures, but just as destructive, and just as much a violation of human rights. Social workers are able to carry out this violation because of the power given them, exceeding that of the criminal law whose boundaries are supposed to ensure our rights. They should not have that power.
References
BBC (2012) ‘After Baby P, what is life like for a social worker?’ 30 January. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16658110
Butler, Patrick (2017) ‘Children in UK’s poorest areas 10 times more likely to go into care’, The Guardian, 28 February. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/28/children-in-uks-poorest-areas-10-times-more-likely-to-go-into-care
Eaton, Scott (2016) ‘Witchcraft Confessions and Sexual Fantasies during the English Civil War’, Notches blog. http://notchesblog.com/2016/12/01/witchcraft-in-the-english-civil-war/
Edinburgh Council (2014) Keeping in Touch. Managing Contact for Looked-after Children. http://www.moray.gov.uk/downloads/file105438.pdf
Federici, Silvia (2014) Caliban and the Witch. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
Forrester, Donald, David Westlake and Georgia Glynn (2012) ‘Parental resistance and social worker skills; towards a theory of motivational social work’, Child & Family Social Work, 17: 118-29. http://www.proceduresonline.com/islington/childcare/user_controlled_lcms_area/uploaded_files/Parental%20resistance%20%26%20social%20worker%20skills%20towards%20a%20theory%20of%20msw.PDF
Laville, Sandra (2017) ‘Children unnecessarily removed from parents, report claims’, The Guardian. 18 January. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/18/children-parents-foster-social-care-families-adoption
Levack, Brian (n.d., accessed 20.11.2018) ‘Day of Wrath (1943)’, Not Even Past blog. https://notevenpast.org/day-wrath-1943/ [no date given, accessed 20 Nov. 2018]
Preuss, Alison (2017) ‘Government's intrusive "Wellbeing Surveys" quizzes school pupils on habits at home’, Sunday Express, 12 February. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/766222/government-wellbeing-surveys-quizzes-pupils-habits-home
Sandeman, George (2017) ‘Huge rise in UK child neglect prompts call for urgent action’, The Guardian, 23 August.
Sanders, Adele Ami (2012) ‘Contested Adoption: the Social Engineering of Families (Negotiating stigma and social exclusion)’, BSc Dissertation, University of Salford, May. http://www.fassit.co.uk/pdf/Contested%20Adoption%20-%20The%20Social%20Engineering%20of%20Families.pdf
Scottish Government (2012) National Risk Framework to Support the Assessment of Children and Young People. https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-risk-framework-support-assessment-children-young-people/
Sharratt, Mary (2011) ‘Witch Persecutions, Women, and Social Change – Germany: 1560-1660’, Viriditas blog.
http://marysharratt.blogspot.com/2011/08/witch-persecutions-women-and-social.html
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