He was 5 years old, a blue-eyed blond with a lively imagination. "A crack-up," his mother calls him. He told stories about bugs that were big enough to eat the Statue of Liberty and telephones oozing with slime.

One day, at his grandmother's urging, he told her about something he said his parents had "taught" him. She took the boy and his younger brother to the Frederick County Department of Social Services and told investigators the children had been sexually abused.

What followed over the next six months included a police raid on the parents' home, allegations of sex abuse against 14 family members, three different foster homes for the boys, exhaustive psychiatric examinations, the loss of a family business and nearly $65,000 in legal fees and other costs.

Ultimately, a Circuit Court judge ruled the parents had not abused the children. No charges were brought against the 12 other family members the boy eventually implicated, including the grandmother.

The judge dismissed the case, returned the boys home and told county social workers to leave the family alone.

But, to DSS, the children are still victims. The agency carries the case as "indicated," in records that are never expunged. Indirectly, the parents remain accused.

"They're not bound by the judge's decision, they make an independent determination," said the parents' attorney, Steven D. Kupferberg of Rockville. "Their position is that, as long as it's kept confidential, it's OK. That's in theory. But in practice these records are disseminated. By court subpoena, by word of mouth."

The parents challenged the records in an administrative law hearing Wednesday, but the hearing examiner said he had no jurisdiction. The parents' only alternative is a constitutional appeal.

Tapped out financially and emotionally, the parents are weary of the fight. At the same time, they want other parents to benefit from what they learned.

"The only thing you can do is maintain your innocence -- absolutely, forever," the father said.

DSS cannot, by law, speak about specific cases. However, asked about his agency's timeliness in dealing with such cases, a supervisor said investigations usually are completed within 60 days. Court hearings prolong the process, he said.

The grandmother declined requests, made through an intermediary, to discuss her role. She and her daughter do not have a good relationship, her daughter says, and the grandmother is suing for visitation rights with her grandchildren.

But the parents -- who first contacted The Evening Sun last summer -- want to talk about how their family was almost destroyed because a 5-year-old boy decided to play with a tube of toothpaste.

This is their account, supported where possible by transcripts and records. Pseudonyms for family members have been used to protect the children's privacy.

THE INCIDENT

On May 30, 1990, 5-year-old Colin was in the bathroom at the home of his grandmother, Alice. He took a tube of toothpaste and squeezed it on his penis. His grandmother walked in.

"Who taught you to do that?" she asked.

Colin told her the name of a playmate. Later, interviews with the friend and his parents would show Colin's friend had been using an ointment for a genital rash at the time.

But the answer apparently did not satisfy Colin's grandmother.

"Did your mom and dad teach you to do that?" she asked him.

Colin's mother, Julie, believes the 5-year-old saw the second question as a chance to escape punishment. "His motive was not to get spanked," Julie says now. He knew his grandmother could not interfere with his mother's rules.

"Yes, they taught me this," he said.

Alice telephoned her daughter and asked to keep the children overnight. It was her husband Jon's birthday, so Julie was delighted by her mother's offer. She drove to Jon's office, where he was working late, with a picnic supper.

Jon and Julie did not know until 12:38 a.m., when the police raided their Frederick tract home, that DSS had obtained an emergency shelter care order for their children.

Colin had been interviewed by a state trooper and a social worker. Whatever he told them -- such interviews are not recorded or videotaped -- apparently convinced them the children had been abused.

"They were almost giddy. They were going to make their name with us," Julie says.

"They thought they had a pornography ring," Jon says. "We were white, middle class, educated -- it was great."

The police, who had a warrant, went straight to a basket by the family room sofa, looking for pornographic magazines Colin reportedly had described. They found only home-decorating magazines.

Finally, an officer took Jon to the squad car and informed him of his rights. Colin and his 2-year-old brother, Brent, were in protective custody.

A judge would have to determine if Colin and Brent were CINA -- children in need of assistance. If he ruled the children were at risk for sexual abuse in their parents' home, they would remain in foster care.

"I'll never forget my astonishment, sitting in a patrol car in the middle of the night, being told I was suspected of abusing my child," Jon says now.

When Julie understood what was happening, she says she blurted out: "My mother, I know it was mother."

THE ANGUISH

In some ways, the case of Jon and Julie was typical.

A child had accused his parents, but there was no corroborating physical evidence. This is common with a charge of sex abuse, according to experts in the field. Such cases usually come down to the child's word against the parents'.

In abuse and neglect cases, social workers find that the charge is "indicated" or "unsubstantiated." If they believe sex abuse is indicated, the agency goes before a judge or juvenile master, who hears from lawyers for the department, the children and the parents, as well as doctors and psychologists.

"Expert testimony," Julie says bitterly, dismissing it with an expletive. "It's like reading tea leaves. It's a racket."

But the case also was unusual. In most such cases, the accusation is against one parent, usually the father. Both Jon and Julie were accused.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the case was that the parents offered DSS an explanation that could be partially corroborated, said their attorney, Kupferberg.

Colin, imitating his playmate, had put the toothpaste on himself, his parents maintained. His grandmother, a woman of extreme religious beliefs whose relationship with her daughter was rocky at best, had jumped to conclusions.

Kupferberg said DSS investigators dragged their feet on checking out the story, although it came up at Colin's first interview. "I had to give them the name [of the playmate and his family]," Kupferberg said. "Even then, they waited for months."

Meanwhile, the case was growing. Within weeks, the parents said, 14 family members stood accused of abusing Colin and Brent -- including the maternal grandmother whose complaint had initiated the investigation. Colin had implicated family members he had not seen for months, according to his parents.

At first, the children were placed in foster care with two Jehovah's Witnesses. The first night there, Julie said, Colin was told he could not wear Ghostbuster pajamas, because they were "satanic."

The parents protested and the agency agreed to place the children with Jon's parents, who relocated from New York for the summer. Jon and Julie, who picked up the bills for the relocation, assumed they would have a court hearing before Labor Day. But summer ended, and the grandparents had to return to New York. The boys went to another foster home.

THE COST

Costs mounted. Julie, who ran a graphic arts business out of her home, sold off the equipment and let go her two employees. Jon continued to work at a small weekly newspaper in Virginia, although he had to tell his co-workers about the investigation after a man approached his boss and said he was dismayed Jon was allowed to work there.

"Defending a CINA is a rich man's case," said Kupferberg, who has handled several such cases. "The rich man in this case is DSS. . . . The state spent in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Kupferberg says he believes the case became a personal vendetta by overzealous DSS staffers.

Warren Davis, the supervisor of intake for Child Protective Services in Frederick County, defends his staff's professionalism.

"When you're dealing with people in any type of situation, of course personal feelings can develop," he said. "But I'm very comfortable with the staff that I supervise that personal feelings do not enter into cases."

Criminal charges were never filed, although Julie says DSS workers "held that over our heads like a dagger" to intimidate them with the threat of a trial.

Jon and Julie did have better-than-average visitation rights -- thrice weekly visits and frequent telephone calls, which they recorded. In the calls, Colin frequently told fantastic tales. Julie asked if he knew the difference between truths and lies. Colin said he did.

But he also said, as he talked about returning home: "I have to do a good job for him [the judge] to say yes, you know." Another time, using words that Julie found eerily adult, Colin informed her he had to tell the truth, "then we can put this all behind us."

Shortly before the court date, Jon and Julie received a letter from DSS, cautioning them against the "blood-letting" of a prolonged hearing.

"Our attitude was, let the blood-letting begin," says Julie.

THE HEARING

In a CINA procedure, the standards are different than those for a criminal case. A judge needs to find only "a preponderance of the evidence" -- a 51 percent likelihood the children are at risk for continued abuse if returned home.

On Dec. 19, after 14 days of testimony in a closed courtroom and a private interview with Colin, the judge ordered the children returned to their parents without further involvement by DSS. In Kupferberg's view, the judge threw the case out.

"They put on their whole entire case. We put on no evidence virtually," the lawyer said.

Kupferberg and his clients concede that the system is designed to err on the side of caution. They say they have no quarrel with that. But once the system has your children, Julie and Jon say, momentum and urgency are lost.

"They're in no hurry to investigate," Jon said. "They've got your kids."

Carolyn Colvin, secretary for the Department of Human Resources, defended DSS policies in an interview last fall. The civil hearing balances whatever power DSS has, Colvin said. The children are the department's only concern.

THE AFTERMATH

Colin returned to his parents somewhat morose and confused. "He initially thought it was all his fault," says Julie, recalling how he would blurt out plans to jump off a high bridge or stab himself with a kitchen knife.

By February, Julie found the family could go for a day without thinking about what had happened. Then the letter arrived, telling Jon and Julie their case had been entered into the records as "indicated."

Despite Wednesday's loss, Kupferberg said, the parents hope to continue fighting the agency's ruling, contending it violates due process, including their son's. "This is his record and we believe he has an interest in what's in it," the lawyer declared.

Whatever happens with the appeal, it seems likely the events of the past year will keep coming back to haunt the family in unexpected ways.

Consider the day Julie, Colin and Brent were picking up toys. Julie threw a small cardboard block at the toy chest and missed, hitting Colin's rear end.

Colin, now 6, said almost reflexively: "Hey, you hit my behind. I have to tell."