Kami and Ben Crawford on Instagram: "STATEMENTYesterday Child Protective Services (CPS) arrived at our home unannounced and interviewed our children, parents & grandmother. This is a scary process because usually children are interrogated away from parents, against their will, and their answers determine the agency's legal right to take away the kids. CPS requires SPECIFIC actions be reported like times, locations and specific abuses. Since these do not exist people had to make them up. Someone reported that we dragged Rainier after mile 13 and across the finish line, pulling him against his will. All 8 family members and eye witnesses (including police officers), and our hours of footage reveal a different story - That Rainier is a young human who was very determined to finish and was never dragged ONCE on the entire 26.2 mile course. In a recorded interview with ABC, the day before, Rainier said that his biggest complaint about the ending was that he was so excited but had to hold our hands implying he wanted to go faster, not slower. When world class olympians with international stages like Kara Goucher & Lee Troop use their large platforms to broadcast absolute moral imperatives without nuance they need to take responsibility when the public tries to enforce these moral imperatives. Witch hunts will be created. Calling a government agency to have children taken away from someone because you don’t like them or something doesn’t “feel right” or because you can not conceive of a 6 year old that enjoys running, is morally reprehensible and a gross misuse of our governmental systems put in place to protect our children. Our entire county has only 3 social service agents. The two of them that spent an hour with our family said they have a total of 60 backlogged cases of potential legitimate abuse and that we have nothing to worry about. Instead of taking lead from the most unbalanced and competitive members of our society who issue universal edicts about how children should be parented it would be better if we looked at the evidence and discussed the pros and cons of running with children. Our family would benefit from these discussions and yours would too. PHOTO: Rainier being interviewed" | Zootzle
