Arizona social workers acted illegally a decade ago when they confiscated three children they believed had been victims of sexual exploitation, according to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for the US Circuit, based in San Francisco. # CPS, as it was then called to the state child welfare arm, got involved when an investigator met with the police and then went to the Demarees' house. Based on a police investigation pending sexual exploitation, as well as a review of the photos, CPS researcher Laura Pederson took the children to foster care, citing the risk of further exploitation, according to court records.

On a summer vacation in San Diego, California, and where they took more than 100 family photographs, Lisa and A.J. Demaree took those images to a store at Walmart.

But between the photographs, there was one that showed her daughters 5, 4 and a year and a half lying on a towel, showing her back exposed, a situation that, although for many is normal, for a store employee was not both and reported the fact to the authorities.

Faced with a possible case of abuse against children, elements of the police immediately arrived at the Demaree's house, searched the house and took the girls into custody for more than a month.

"It was a nightmare, it was amazing, I could not believe it, I started hyperventilating, I was trying to breathe," Lisa Demaree said in an interview with ABC News a year after the assault on her home.

The couple, who defended the photos as "photos of their daughters in the bathroom," sued child welfare workers, alleging that they violated the family's constitutional rights when they took the children without a court order and without legal status. emergency.

The case provoked a broad debate due to the nature of the alleged offense: nude photos of little girls who were 5, 4 and 1 1/2 years old at that time. Where some saw the actions of the parents as typical, taking pictures that could be shared in a family or placed in a photo album, others saw them as pornographic.

But the case also has implications for a heated debate in Arizona: the need for a court order before social welfare workers can remove a child from the home of a family.

During that time the children were left under the care of their grandparents, while Lisa, who was a teacher at a local school, was suspended from her job, which could be reinstated until a year after the complaint.

For their part, the social investigators engaged in interviewing friends and relatives of the Demaree. They wanted to know if those parents were child molesters, specifically their daughters. But, as expected, none wielded even a thread of suspicion.

The Demaree family decided to take legal action against employees of the Child Protection Service for violation of their constitutional rights. The trial lasted almost 10 years, when an appeals court gave the reason to the Demaree after several missteps during the whole process.

Finally a judge observed the photos, and considered the case ruled out. He pointed out that they were just warm familiar scenes, like any other. But the damage to the Demaree family was done. They had been separated from their daughters for more than a month, placing them in social custody.

The police interviewed the parents. The forensic exams found no signs of sexual abuse of the children.

"The social workers had no reasonable cause to believe that the girls were at serious risk of bodily harm or sexual abuse.
Therefore, upon seeing the Demaree's favorable record, the defendants acted unconstitutionally in removing the three girls from their home without judicial authorization, "said the panel of three judges of the 9th Circuit of San Francisco.

The photos have not been publicly disclosed. The court described one that shows the three naked in a towel, "focusing on her buttocks but showing some genitals." A.J. Demaree told police at the time that he had no intention of sharing the photo with anyone, saying it was a memory for him and his wife, "so when we look back at them years later, look at their cute butts."