by Rekha Basu, The Des Moines Register

The girls alleged that their father had touched them improperly on multiple occasions. The appeals court canceled the rulings by a Dubuque County judge who granted the father joint, unrestricted custody of the girls, and had ordered restricted, supervised contact with their grandmother who brought the allegations to light.

“Each part of the system has an independent role to play in child protection, but they seem to have coalesced to leave vulnerable children at risk. If that happened here, how many other claims have been similarly dispensed with?”