Child Neglect - Leaving your children with your spouse can be a crime?!

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When I was younger, I had a family friend who was in the army reserves. She was a weekend warrior, and had two children, both under the age of eight. She was married to a man other than their biological father (again I was little, I don't know where their real dad was). For non-American citizens reading this, the US Army Reserves requires training for limited time periods throughout the year, as well as a "drill" weekend, which is one weekend a month where the reservist is away from home and at a base or training area. While my friend was serving her drill weekend, she found herself being arrested for child neglect... because the children's stepfather had abused and seriously injured one of the children earlier in the day. Family Services stated that she was in the act of neglect simply by leaving them with her husband (who had no prior reported history of violence). It took two years for her to get her children back. When she did, it was several years before family services was entirely out of her life, as family services would determine where she lived, which church the children attended, which school that they attended (they lived across the street from one, but demanded they attend a school over 4 miles away so they spent several hours a day on a city bus just to get to and fro), she was not allowed to reprimand them in any way, and to boot, family services insisted that the children be placed in a child care service (at the mother's expense, of course!) even though the mother was home from work in time to get the children on/off the city bus immediately after the school day ended. Does anyone see injustice in this?