> This is obviously going to attract the wrong sort of people, and the right sort of people will be influenced by them and frustrated in their own right.

This is a very important thing to internalize: whatever your arrangement. Any position that's given power over others, or over children, or over mental patients will attract exactly the sort of people that are the worst possible case to have such power.

Power over others ? Bullies, torturers, rapists.

Power over children ? Paedophiles.

Power over mental patients ? Bullies, torturers, rapists.

So any child care system, mental health system and prison system needs to be designed so that even with a group of paedophiles taking all the decisions (which WILL be the case, as demonstrated above) the system does not lead to abuse.

Is it the same in the US ? You bet [1]. What do US child abuse/child protection services do when caught molesting children ? They cover it up and protect the guilty. From that wikipedia page:

"Several lawsuits were brought in 2008 against the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF), accusing it of mishandling reports that Thomas Ferrara, 79, a foster parent, was molesting young girls.[36][37] The suits claimed that even though there were records of sexual misconduct allegations against Ferrara in 1992, 1996, and 1999, the DCF continued to place foster children with Ferrara and his then-wife until 2000.[36]"

"In July 2002, the federal court granted plaintiffs’ experts access to 500 children’s case files, allowing plaintiffs to collect information concerning harm to children in foster care through a case record review.[42] These files revealed numerous cases in which foster children were abused, and DYFS failed to take proper action. On June 9, 2004, the child welfare panel appointed by the parties approved the NJ State’s Reform Plan."

(note: no action was taken to punish the guilty. There was simply a request for a "reform plan", no mention is made for any checks to a reform plan)

"The foster parent, John Jackson, was licensed by the state, despite the fact that he abused his own wife and son, overdosed on drugs and was arrested for drunken driving. In 2006, Jackson was convicted in Santa Clara County of nine counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child by force, violence, duress, menace and fear, and seven counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.[32] The sex acts that he forced the children in his foster care to perform sent him to prison for 220 years. Later in 2010, Giarretto Institute, the private foster family agency responsible for licensing and monitoring Jackson's foster home and others, was also found to be negligent and liable for 75 percent of the abuse that was inflicted on the victim, and Jackson himself was liable for the rest.[32]"

"In 2009, Oregon Department of Human Services agreed to pay $2 million into a fund for the future care of twins who were allegedly abused by their foster parents; this was the largest such settlement in the agency's history.[34] According to the civil rights suit filed on request of the twins' adoptive mother in December 2007 in U.S. Federal Court, the children were kept in makeshift cages—cribs covered with chicken wire secured by duct tape—in a darkened bedroom known as "the dungeon." The brother and sister often went without food, water or human touch. The boy, who had a shunt put into his head at birth to drain fluid, did not receive medical attention, so when police rescued the twins he was nearly comatose. The same foster family previously took into their care hundreds of other children over nearly four decades.[35] DHS said the foster parents deceived child welfare workers during the checkup visits.[34]"

Apparently checkup visits in Oregon miss the fact that children are kept in cages.

Needless to say, all of the above cases make it very, VERY clear that only the minutest tip of the iceberg was actually caught. Serial paedophile works for Florida CPS, gets 400 children ... and abuses a single one ? Riiight. Let's realistically assume he violated half of them. That would mean about 0.5% of child abuse in child protective services in the US is actually caught.

In all cases, child rapists working for CPS in at least 4 states were each given hundreds of children, dozens per year. At least 78% of those, according to [2], were never sexually abused by their parents, and a further 11% were only abused in the sense that there was inadequate supervision, or their parents got drunk). Given that the above cases alone would reasonably be ~800 children that were abused, we can assume that 89% of those, or 716 were abused because child protective services protected them. That's for a period of about 8 years, and only the very tip of the iceberg, cases famous enough to be very widely reported. How many cases are like that ? 1% ? 10% ?

10% would mean that of all children child protective services takes in (~500000) about 15% get sexually abused, versus 0.08% of children in the general US society (0.009 * 0.09, according to the wikipedia page), or CLOSE TO 18518% MORE THAN WOULD BE ABUSED WITHOUT CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

1% would mean that of all children child protective services takes in, about 1.5% get sexually abused, or about 20x more than if child protective services did not exist.

You know, the amount of children that child protective services gave to these convicted paedophiles in these very public cases (in half the cases WHEN THEY KNEW THOSE WERE CONVICTED PAEDOPHILES) is about equal to the total number of children sexually abused in the United States. So if the above cases are all there is, that would mean that at least half of the children sexually abused in the US get abused because Child protective services exists.

Which of course, creates a bigger need for more child protection. Where else could a paedophile go where the damage they do gets them more children ?

That's the result of creating an organization that's such a ridiculously tempting target for paedophiles.

And given that you're right, Europe does a lot more interfering, which would mean that in Europe the situation should be worse, not better.

Thanks for pointing me to the US. Much more numbers available. Sad, very, very, very sad numbers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_care_in_the_United_Stat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse#United_States