R272 You said "You can speculate about why that didn't happen- privilege blah blah blah - but speculation is meaningless with no facts" and "Neither of those things happened which tells you Brad did nothing wrong, let alone criminal." R266 claimed that Maddox was onto plane mouthing off and deserved whatever BP did to him, yet you didn't accuse that poster of speculating. Your own posts are also based upon speculations and conjectures, nothing wrong with that but don't accuse others of doing the same when you do it too. BTW isn't speculation the territory of gossip threads? In BP fans' eyes he could do no wrong, not even after he'd admitted to being a substance abuser throughout his marriage to AJ.

Back to the issue you'd raised about no CPS escalation= no evidence of abuse/ wrongdoing. That is a technicality that could be interpreted to be true yet within the framework of what CPS can legally do/ what it does, that's another topic ripe for discussion. As someone who's mandated to report to CPS cases of suspected abuse, and as someone who has cooperated in such investigations, it's not as black or white as people believe. Your determination that BP did nothing wrong because CPS didn't remove the children from the family, that is patently wrong interpretation of what CPS can do. Also it's wrong when applied to well-off families such as the Jolie-Pitt family.

In reports of suspected abuse/ neglect when parental substance abuse is involved, CPS will first determine whether or not the children are living in safe situation/ place. As it turns out, wealthy families have the resources to have the parent under investigation leave the family home or seek treatment while the investigation is active. Second, CPS will not derail any efforts to regain sobriety on the substance-abusing parent's part. In fact quite the opposite. Even during ongoing investigations, parents (substance-abusing or not) remain the legal caretaker of their children, and CPS's goal is not to remove children from your care/ legal conservatorship but to help you regain well-being so that you can fully care for your children. As long as you can demonstrate that the children will not be unsafe while you're getting treatment, they won't be removed from the family home.

When considering the children's welfare, with cases involving older children/ teens, CPS will give more weight to their own experiences/ attitudes with regards to substance use, awareness of your substance use, as well as the dynamics of parental-child relationship within the family. In my experience, it is the poorer families without access to resources and support who get treated more harshly in suspected abuse/ neglect cases where parental substance abuse plays a factor. Even then, if the parent is attending treatment program it is rare that the children would be taken away from the family home or determination to escalate to termination of parental rights. The latter involves documented instances of neglect, abuse, and unwillingness/ inability of the parent to comply with previous agreements. I once had a female meth addict patient (low-income) who is a mother to 6 kids ranging from young adult to newborn infant and had custody of none of the older children. Yet even as her newborn tested positive for MJ, meth, and a slew of other substances, CPS was still working with her to get clean and maintain legal custody of her newborn (who was placed with a foster family).

In a way CPS investigations involving wealthy families is more challenging, because parental resources can often mask neglect/ abuse, or their wealth provides a cover to buy time to let these things go away. If you're a drunk who lives in a mansion with your children and their nannies, you're able to demonstrate that the children's safety isn't an issue. As is the case with parental substance abuse, most of the long-lasting scars aren't physical but emotional particularly with the older children bearing the brunt of it most of the time.