Spanking or assault? One family's child welfare system experience

Our government accountability reporter Josh Keefe has written a lot about Maine's child welfare system, and the debates playing out in Augusta over what qualifies as abuse and neglect, and what constitutes an appropriate response from the state.

But it's difficult to get a full picture of what's really going on, because decisions are made behind closed doors, and details withheld even from the legislators tasked with oversight.

This week, Josh has a longform piece that goes deep into one family's case, offering a rare glimpse inside the system because of a mother's willingness to share her story. It's the product of several months of reporting, and is based on police reports, child protection case records, body camera and surveillance footage, court filings and transcripts, as well as extensive interviews with the woman, her lawyers, and the child’s father.

It's an in-depth portrait of one woman's attempt to navigate the system that took her son away, a system she believes is unfair. “There’s this strange kind of dichotomy,” she told Josh, describing a paradox at the heart of the child protective system: the department demands collaboration, but regaining custody of one's child often requires resistance.

You can read the story of that fight, and get a close look at a system under fire, in Josh's piece below. We hope you'll let us know what you think.

— Stephanie

A woman hit her son in a grocery store parking lot.

She says it was a spanking. The state says it was child abuse.

The story of one Maine woman’s fight to get her son back offers a rare glimpse inside the state’s secretive child welfare system.

Read this story by Josh Keefe

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Protections for abortion providers, new regulations for urgent care clinics signed into law: A few notable health care bills that were recently signed into law. Read this story by Rose Lundy

Paper mills in Maine and across the U.S. releasing more greenhouse gases than federal data shows: As the Trump administration eyes rollbacks on industrial emissions limits, a new report claims that paper mills are already dirtier than they appear. Read this story by Emmett Gartner

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Maine lawmakers grapple with what constitutes child neglect

(Published in May 2025)

The debates in Augusta center on concerns that Maine is unnecessarily investigating poor families and, in some cases, removing children for symptoms of poverty that are unfairly classified as neglect.

Read this story by Josh Keefe

Have feedback or a correction to send to Stephanie McFeeters? Send it to her directly via email: stephanie@themainemonitor.org.

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