Court Opinion

ID: 9670587
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:22:56.427338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:05.418833
License: Public Domain

DAY, J.
(concurring). I agree with the majority opinion and write because I believe it is important that the dissent not go unchallenged.
On November 26, 1983, a nationally syndicated columnist published an article1 saying that child abuse:
“. . . is the worst of crimes, against the most defenseless of victims. ... In 1981 there were 885,000 *459reported cases of child abuse, twice as many as in 1976. Every year 5,000 children die at the hands of their parents. . . . [H]ospitals, police, social agencies and volunteer groups must be ever-vigilant. Anyone who suspects child abuse has an obligation to report it. When you look the other way you become a co-conspirator in the crime.”
Had one or both of these children been killed because a social worker failed to insist on seeing them after receiving the information this agency had received one can well imagine the waves of outrage and disgust that would have swept through the community because of the social worker’s failure to act.
Such a scenario points up how wrong the dissent is in its interpretation of the application of well settled principles of law.
It is important in this case to keep in mind that the anonymous caller to the social service staff named the children and their abuser, related that the children had been abused the day before,2 related that one child, on the following day, was still unable to walk normally, that the children needed medical attention, and related that the abuser had a bad temper. The social worker having this information was absolutely justified in insisting on seeing these children and in entering the home without a warrant.
The need for medical attention for the children, caused by a beating administered by the stepfather mentioned by the “anonymous” caller, (the caller turned out to be the children’s grandfather) turned out to be true; the mention of bruises on the bodies of the children turned out to be true; the mentioned limping of the boy caused by the beatings he had received turned out to be true; the bad temper of their tormentor mentioned by the caller turned out to be true. What wasn’t mentioned by *460the anonymous caller was that part of the little boy’s lip was torn away and the wound dirty and inflamed, and that a three inch patch of his hair had been jerked out by his tormentor. The record shows that the little boy was five years old; his sister ten. Clearly the emergency doctrine had been called into play before the entry into the house by the social worker and was verified by the children’s condition. In the face of these facts, the dissent would have us hold that the social worker should have turned her back on the children’s reported plight when their attacker asked if she had a warrant!
The dissent further tells us we “value family autonomy and privacy and the sanctum of the home.” (Dissent, p. 462). But the house was not just the abuser’s home, it was also the home of these two children and they had a right to the protection and help this social worker rightfully gave to them in this case. Far from being a “sanctum,” the house had more the characteristics of a torture chamber for these unfortunate children. This house was hardly “the source ... of physical and emotional security” to which the dissent alludes. (Dissent, p. 462). To her credit, the social worker entered this house, saw the battered condition of these children and took them to the hospital where they could receive the needed medical attention and protection.
The dissent brushes aside the well supported position of the majority that this is clearly a case where the emergency doctrine applies, thus authorizing entry into a dwelling without a warrant.
But the dissent claims Ms. Hammel, the social worker, violated the stepfather’s “constitutional right” against “unreasonable search and seizure” by coming to the rescue of these children. The dissent tells us:
“This case involves the delicate balance of two cherished values: protecting our children and protecting the family from coercive intervention by government agents.”
*461“These values were in the balance when the social worker for Oconto County Department of Social Services responded to an anonymous report about children who might need protection.” (Dissent, p. 463).
What is this “delicate balance” to which the dissent refers? The key word is “unreasonable” searches and seizures. The founding fathers left us with the means to protect ourselves from tyranny but they defined it in terms of human reasonableness. They did not direct or authorize us to substitute in its place some fanciful definition of what is reasonable. The failure to consider the nature of “unreasonable search and seizure” has in the dissent led to a decision to tip the “delicate balance,” not in favor of the child-victims, but in favor of their tormentor!
The soaring rhetoric that stirs the hearts of lovers of liberty in exalting the constitutional protections which fend off the jack-booted soldiers of the king about to break down the cotter’s door in search of pamphlets denouncing the king’s tyranny somehow becomes a caricature, a farce, when the person knocking at the door is a social worker investigating a detailed and well-founded complaint of terrible abuse against two helpless children. To so trivialize the constitution is to make a mockery of the great document. The dissent doesn’t protect rights —it seeks to create rights where none exist.
The age of enlightenment, of which our constitution is truly one of the great ornaments, exalted the role of human reason in man’s quest for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Contemporary iconography showed this greatest of human attributes as a beautiful goddess. To rob reason of rational thought is to change her to a shriveled hag, reducing her from an object of adoration to one of derision and contempt.
We should not permit the Bill of Rights to be twisted into becoming a “Bill of Wrongs” in the perception of *462the victims of crime. The shield protecting our civil liberties should not be refabricated into a cloak to hide and protect the child abuser in this case.
Contrary to the assertion of the dissent, this case does not “demonstrate a need for guidelines.” (Dissent, p. 474). Quite the contrary. Here the well settled demands of the emergency doctrine were met. Each case must of necessity stand or fall on its own set of facts and be weighed in light of the standards this court has set.
The dissent would grant the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence the social worker gathered following her entry into the children’s home and would not permit such evidence to be used in the defendant’s trial. The majority disagrees. I agree with the majority.
I am authorized to state that Justices WILLIAM G. CALLOW and LOUIS J. CECI join in this concurring opinion.

 Wisconsin State Journal, November 12, 1983, section 3, page 4.

 Affidavit of Joni Hammel on the criminal complaint.