The call can be made anonymously, making the hotlines potent tools for harassment. More often, however, false allegations are well-meaning mistakes made by people who have taken the advice of the child savers. These workers can go to a child's school or day care center and interrogate them without warning. Such an interrogation can undercut the bonds of trust essential for healthy parent-child relationships and traumatize children for whom the only harm is the harm of the investigation itself. Workers can search homes and strip-search children without a warrant.
Child savers insist such searches are rare.
But in the course of defending against a lawsuit, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services acknowledged how common they really are. Workers make these decisions on their own. There is no hearing beforehand, no way for the accused to defend themselves. Workers have that power in 29 of America's 55 states and territories. In all but four of the rest, they need merely call the police to do it for them.