I have not seen the video tape, but people have different standards of what they would consider abuse. I was once thrown out of a store for slapping my son's hand when he tried to grab a handful of pencils from a store display, this after he had just dumped three other containers of items from the counter, and having just been yelled at by the store personnel for climbing into the display window. When I (very frustrated) tried to explain that he was perfectly bright and pushing everyone's buttons, but nonverbal due to his speech problem, the store owner told me, "I don't care about your issues, I only care about mine." The whole family history in regard to childcare should be examined. People don't usually lose custody of their kids for shoplifting, parking tickets, or fraud.

Strange aside: Just now, while browsing the threads before heading home from work, I tried Aine's link and was told by the computer, "You are not authorized to access this site." I never have any trouble accessing most stuff from this computer, and I have never seen a message like that before. Is there some other possible reason for that message, like I have to be registered on some other site or something? Other Mudcat links work just fine. I would hate to think that the NPS would restrict access to online research from one of its libraries.