My argument above is not some claim either that horrible things don't happen or that you don't have experience with these horrible things - or even that you don't have experience with CPS getting out of hand. So it's false imo to say that there is something I "can't seem to accept as valid" in itself.

Which is to say, you're being very respectable while flagrantly misstating my position. This is a bad kind of "meeting in the middle" view.

I'm talking systems. I think we should talk systems - millions of people and millions of children are affected. There isn't an experience you could personally offer that's going fundamental change our concept of what CPS has become as a system.

Edit: A big thing is that in many US social services, we have a giant machine which does horrible, horrible things but where each person who's a part of it can honestly say they're doing their best and can point to other horrible things that might happen if they stopped doing the problematic thing they do now. It's a "tensile structure" ... of evil. It can't be fixed by balancing, it maintains itself with arguments of apparent balance. Which is why I feel justified making a call to cut through the broad "balance" perspective.