Actually, I was one of the people who sided with the Christine from a legal standpoint, though I don't endorse what I read about their childrearing methods. But the facts of that case were really troubling.
I don't recall all the details, but one serious issue was that the youngest girl , who IIRC was only around 4, was snatched from the family's bus-home by authorities and then subjected not only to interviews, but also to a physical exam which included a pelvic exams, photos of which one of the judges involved in the case deemed "pornographic". Neither the parents, nor an attorney for the parents was present for any of this. By the time a young child has been subjected that kind of trauma, even assuming she wasn't deliberately "coached", it is utterly impossible for a child psychiatrist to reliably determine what kind of abuse, if any, may have been perpetrated on the child by the parents. E.g. if you gave that little girl one of those anatomically correct dolls BEFORE all that, she'd react to it in one way, but would almost certainly react very differently if it was given to her after the pelvic exam, which was conducted by strangers while she had no idea where her parents or siblings were or whether she'd ever see them again.
While I thought it was pretty clear that the Christine family did warrant some intervention by authorities, there was no evidence that anything short of grabbing the children and keeping them away from their parents, had been seriously attempted first (or attempted at all). That case might well have been handled by court-ordered parenting classes and social worker visits. Given the heavy-handed and child-traumatizing methods by which the authorities initially dealt with the family, I felt the Christines needed to be cut some slack and offered some alternatives that didn't involve terminating their parental rights.
That's why it is important to look out for people being abused by CPS, but at the same time not assume that CPS is always abusive. If I ran the local CPS in the case we are talking about on this thread, I would have no problem getting a warrant given the information that seems to be known.